


Whipping Boy

by Caroly214



Series: Whipping Boy [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Sam Wilson Angst, Steve Rogers Angst, Tony Stark Angst, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony Stark-centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-10-12
Packaged: 2018-06-07 08:20:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6796471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caroly214/pseuds/Caroly214
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Avengers deal with the fallout of CA:CW.  Originally Tony-centric with Tony reflecting on his “friendship” with Steve and how he always ends up as the MCU’s whipping boy.  Later chapters focus on other Avengers and how their friendships are suffering in the aftermath of the Sokovia Accords.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Original summary (when this was a one-shot): Immediate post CA:CW Tony-centric scene: Tony reflects on his “friendship” with Steve and how he always ends up as the MCU’s whipping boy. (Probably Tony CA:CW reaction fic number 5,000,001, but I had to work through my frustration somehow).
> 
> Lots of Tony-angst and feels (seriously, someone give that man a hug), and some Steve-bashing. For whatever it’s worth, I don't think Steve is a bad guy, nor do I think he made his decisions out of malice towards Tony. He’s human and he makes mistakes, and boy, did he ever in CA:CW. But but both Tony and I are pissed off at Steve right now, so that heavily influenced this fic. Maybe once I work through my frustration, I’ll do something from Steve’s POV and show that he’s not as bad as I’m portraying here.
> 
> I’ve only seen CA:CW once, so I may not have everything right; if you see a mistake, please let me know. And I’ve read only one other CA:CW reaction fic (and that was an accident), so this might be similar to others, but I’m not intentionally duplicating any other fic.
> 
> Not beta-ed, so all mistakes are my own. Obviously, spoilers for CA:CW. Also, spoilers for season 2 of Agent Carter and previous MCU films, especially Iron Man (I), Captain America: The First Avenger, and Avengers: Age of Ultron.

There was only so long Tony could distract himself with the blinking red light and baiting Ross. Same thing with developing the robo-legs for Rhodey. Sooner or later, he would have to face the events of the past several months. So, once he’d - somewhat politely - told Ross to go to hell, he found himself staring at Steve’s attempt at an olive branch and decided, what the hell: he may as well get facing the shitstorm that was his life over with.

Apparently, the universe had decided that Tony Stark was going to be its whipping boy. It couldn’t even let something simple like his name go unscathed: Tony Stank. Talk about kicking a dog while it was down.

No matter what Tony did, no matter how hard and in how many ways he tried to help others, he somehow always ended up the villain and/or the loser. Even when he compromised, even when admitted he made a mistake and tried to fix it, he still lost. Somehow, Steve never even considered compromising or even taking into account someone else’s point of view and got to keep everything: friends, family, and freedom. Oh, and he got new allies and a safe haven.

In that last fight, when Steve had said that Barnes was his friend, Tony had responded, “So was I.” At the time, he was trying to point out how Steve had chosen to support one friend and betray another. Tony had known, at that point, that he had no longer been Steve’s friend.

Except that was wrong. Now that he thought about it, he realized he had never been Steve’s friend. Steve had been Tony’s friend, but there had never been any reciprocity. From the start, Steve had looked down on Tony, deciding, after having just met, that Tony was unworthy. Supposedly, they’d put that aside during and after the Battle of New York, but Tony wondered now how much of that had been Steve’s guilt in the face of Tony’s near-sacrifice. When Tony decided to re-form and sponsor the Avengers, he’d thought Cap had come on board and that they were becoming true friends.

But then Ultron happened and Tony got another taste of Steve’s “friendship”: standing by while Thor attacked an un-armored Tony and then attacking Tony himself when Steve chose to believe the turncoat Wanda about Tony’s motivations. Even with those betrayals, Tony had somehow still believed that he was Steve’s friend. And then even with Steve’s refusal to even seriously talk about the Accords, and his subsequent escape with Barnes, Tony had begged for and received 36 hours to bring them in, hopefully saving them from a worse fate. When Tony had learned that Barnes might be innocent of the Vienna bombing, he’d broken the Accords himself, going behind Ross’ back, to help Steve and Barnes. Every overture, every open hand, had been Tony’s. Never Steve’s. Most of those overtures, Steve ignored, but the few times Steve had taken Tony’s offered hand, he’d turned around and stabbed Tony in the back.

And then…he couldn't even think about it. It was one thing knowing your parents had died; it was another to find out they'd been brutally murdered by seeing them be brutally murdered. He hadn’t been close to his Dad, and their relationship had been rocky, to say the least (he realized now it was probably because they were so similar), but Howard was his Dad. And the opportunity to fix their relationship had been taken from them. And his Mom… He had to take a deep breath to hold back a sob. She had been completely innocent, hurt, and afraid, but the Winter Soldier had murdered her without remorse.

Now that Tony had had time to process his shock and grief, he knew Bucky Barnes wasn’t to blame for his parents’ murders; Barnes and his parents had all been victims of Hydra. But he hadn’t been allowed the opportunity to come to terms with that. Instead, he’d faced the shock and grief - and the betrayal of a man he had thought was his friend - all at once. He’d reacted - not well, he could admit now - but he had been so overwhelmed by hurt and pain, he hadn’t been thinking straight; actually, he hadn’t been thinking at all. He’d just wanted to strike out and hurt them as much as they’d hurt him.

Steve had done them all a disservice by withholding the truth from Tony. He hadn’t trusted Tony to be able to think it through and move beyond the grief and pain. In doing so, he put Barnes in danger. And Steve had revealed himself to be a selfish coward; at least he’d finally admitted he’d withheld the truth not for Tony’s sake, but for his own. He had worked side-by-side with Tony for months, joked with him, made Tony think they were friends, all the while lying (and yes, a lie of omission is still a lie; Tony wouldn’t let Steve off the hook based on that technicality). 

The hypocrisy was staggering. Steve withholding the truth from Tony was just another instance of Steve knowing what was best and deciding for everyone. But how many times had Steve railed against Tony for keeping things from the team? How many times had he criticized Tony for not being a team player? How many times had he castigated Tony for thinking he was right and deciding things for others? Every one of those actions, flaws of the highest order for Tony, were apparently virtues for the self-righteous Steve. Tony’s sins hadn’t been that he had been too arrogant or didn’t play well with others; he had sinned by not falling in with Steve’s worldview. _All hail Saint Steve: sole arbiter of what is right and just_ , Tony thought bitterly.

It was obvious now, but it had taken Tony a long time to see it: Steve’s friends were those who agreed with him and bought into his cult of personality. The “civil war” was a perfect example of that. Those on Tony’s side were there, not because of Tony - and in one case, in spite of Tony - but because they agreed with the policy. But on Steve’s side, it was all based on personal relationships. There had been no discussion of the issues on Steve’s side because they were irrelevant. What had mattered was Steve’s choice and they all fell in line. And even those who agreed with Tony on policy couldn’t help being sucked into Steve’s cult: Natasha had agreed with and signed the Accords, but betrayed them because Steve was her friend. Everyone apparently believed that Steve had to be right because of who he was and they followed him like lambs being led to the slaughter. 

Tony had never bought into that cult. Maybe he was immune thanks to his Dad never shutting up about Steve. Or maybe it was the disastrous start to his relationship with Steve. Regardless of the reason, that made Tony the enemy. So no matter what Tony did, if Steve disagreed, Tony had to be wrong. And Tony was the one to suffer the consequences.

After Ultron, Tony had taken all the blame, among both the team and the public. He hadn’t fought it because he knew he was at fault. But Steve, the leader of the Avengers who attacked a couple of his fellow Avengers, came through completely unscathed, still the hero in everyone’s eyes. Tony left to save the team (and to attempt to save his doomed relationship with Pepper), but failed on both counts. Steve hadn’t been confronted by grieving mothers; only Tony had. Steve had withdrawn to the Avengers compound and insulated himself from the public, ignoring the evidence of his own mistakes, always insisting he was right. 

Somehow, Steve managed to keep nearly everyone in his self-declared family, even in exile. He broke multiple laws on multiple occasions, in multiple countries, hurting innocent members of the public who had just being doing their jobs in the process. But instead of facing a prison cell - or any form of justice, for that matter - he was being treated as an honored guest in Wakanda, along with the friends he’d broken out of prison. 

Tony, on the other hand, had lost nearly everything. Even though he’d lost his parents over two decades ago, the recent revelations made him feel like he was losing them all over again. He’d already lost Pepper (and he could pretend they were just taking a break, but deep down, he knew better). His best friend was paralyzed, and as much as Tony loved Rhodey, the guilt he felt whenever he looked at his friend was beginning to taint their friendship. His other best friend - JARVIS - he’d lost a while ago and his relationship with Vision was...ambiguous. Despite Vision siding with Tony, Tony knew it wasn't because of loyalty to Tony.

And he’d lost his team. Back all those years ago, when he’d first started out as Iron Man, he’d told Pepper that he finally knew what it was that he was supposed to do. And it wasn’t completely about making up for his past; he knew that he could actually do some good for the world. For a while, he did it solo, but over time, he’d learned the importance of being a part of a team. He’d learned what it was like to have someone watch your back. He’d learned that coping with nightmares was easier when you weren’t the only one, when someone else understood what you were going through. He’d learned what it was like to be a part of something bigger than yourself. And he’d learned what it was like to have a family, not one based on blood, but on choice, and on love. 

It was gone now. In these cavernous halls, with only his last 2 friends, he was more alone than he had been in years, maybe more than he’d ever been before. When he was younger, he had filled the emptiness with parties, alcohol, drugs, and sex. The thought of doing that now turned his stomach. He knew they were extremely poor substitutes for family and friends. And he also knew from bitter experience that they wouldn’t take away the pain and probably wouldn’t be able to mask it, even temporarily.

But he knew he was right, even though being right meant he’d had to make a deal with the devil. He’d had to side with Thaddeus Ross, a man Tony would have happily thrown off a cliff because of his treatment of Bruce. But the man was the Secretary of State, appointed by the elected President and confirmed by the elected members of the Senate, so it wasn’t as if Tony could just ignore that Ross was a legitimate representative of the American people. He’d kept Wanda confined to the Avengers compound, but considering that she wasn’t an American citizen and the fight they’d had to get her a visa in the first place (not surprisingly, the government hadn’t been pleased when they’d learned she’d been part of Hydra and had originally sided with Ultron), plus that she had been almost solely responsible for the deaths in Lagos, her visa could have been revoked - or worse. Keeping her at the compound until things calmed down would have kept her safe. And he’d had to hunt down and fight his friends, but he knew that if he let others do it, they wouldn’t have been so merciful. They weren’t easy choices to make, and he had some regrets, but he had thought they were necessary to keep his team safe, while also protecting the public.

The irony of it all was that Steve had proven all the fears about enhanced individuals were correct. The US had undertaken Operation Rebirth as a response to Hydra and specifically to the Red Skull, who had taken the concept of the ubermensch to terrifying heights, believing they were better than everyone else and were entitled to rule over them. Steve wasn’t bright red, but he was getting far too close to Red Skull’s example for comfort. There was an elite group whose members believed themselves to be above the rules and laws of the rest of society; was he describing Hydra or Steve’s Avengers? Admittedly, there was a big difference between the two, because the Avengers weren’t deliberately murdering people, but to the loved ones of those who had been killed by the Avengers’ actions, was there really a difference? Tony himself had been called a murderer as all this began.

Of all the many stories his Dad had told him about Steve, one in particular stood out: Dr. Erskine telling Steve to be a good man. Tony had to admit he was probably not the best person to decide what makes a good man, but selfishly acting in your own best interest and ignoring the best interests of others probably did not qualify. But Tony had no idea how to get through to Steve, to show him how so many others were seeing him, not as a good man who saved people, but as a criminal people feared. Maybe he should send the Star Trek episode and movie (the original, not the new one) with Khan and the fictional Eugenics Wars. If the original Star Trek series could point out the idiocy of racism by showing people who had the colors black and white on opposite sides of their bodies, maybe it could also point out to Steve the dangers of enhanced individuals believing they weren’t bound by laws made by the rest of society.

He’d heard, recently, about Sharon Carter’s eulogy of her aunt and somehow wasn’t surprised that Aunt Peggy had been just like Steve: doing whatever the hell she believed was right regardless of what anyone else thought, and never suffering the consequences, while everyone around her suffered instead (he could still remember the sadness in Jarvis and Ana’s expressions when, as an oblivious 7-year-old, he had asked why they didn’t have children). The post-WWII SSR files and the early SHIELD files had been very interesting reading. He still couldn't figure out how Aunt Peggy had not ended up in prison - or at least deported - after breaking a Soviet spy/assassin out of prison and then letting her go free among the populace. 

And don’t get him started on the stupidity of Aunt Peggy and Steve’s plan to rescue Barnes during the war. Where had they expected his Dad to land the plane, and then later take off from? Planes need space to land and get airborne, but the Hydra prison had been in the middle of a forest. How was an unarmed, silver - not camouflaged - plane supposed to avoid being shot down or destroyed, especially when it was a sitting duck on the ground? And how were they going to get all of the POWs they rescued on his Dad’s plane? There had been 400 or so of them. Had Steve intended to rescue only Barnes, leaving all of the others behind? (Considering recent events, Tony could actually believe that had been the case; no one mattered to Steve but Bucky Barnes). It was not a great plan. It was just another example of Steve acting recklessly and putting others in danger to save his friend. If Steve hadn’t succeeded through sheer luck, he, Aunt Peggy, and Tony’s Dad would have - rightfully - had their asses handed to them.

He sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose, trying to figure out where it all went wrong. Steve and his friends had acted as if they would have been locked up solely for not signing the Accords, but that had never been the case. Ross told them they could sign the Accords or retire. It was only when they continued to act, fighting members of the public and their former teammates who had complied with the Accords, that they were locked up (truthfully, Tony wasn’t really upset Steve broke them all out of prison; he’d never wanted any of them to be locked up and the conditions at the Raft were more horrific than he’d imagined). He just could not figure out what was so wrong with oversight and safeguards designed to protect the people they were supposed to be protecting. The only explanation was that Steve and his cohort put their own needs over the needs of others. It was exactly the thing that superheroes shouldn’t do.

His gaze landed, once again, on Steve’s letter. Now, after everything, after Steve’s betrayal, taking away the people Tony had thought of as friends and family, after Steve ran away to a safe haven where he didn’t have to follow the law, he’d apparently decided it was (finally) his turn to make the overture and open his hand to Tony, offering to help whenever Tony needed it. Tony snorted in disbelief. _Seriously?_ Did Steve actually think Tony would ever want Steve’s “help”? He’d had enough already, thank you very much. More than enough, even. Was Steve so deluded that he’d believe Tony would ever be able to trust him again? How many times was Steve going to betray Tony before Steve thought it would be enough to permanently break their supposed friendship? Or did he think he could keep abusing Tony and Tony would just keep coming back for more? He knew about the cycle of violence and repentance abusers used to keep their victims from leaving; was that was Steve’s friendly behavior had been? One moment attacking Tony and the next joking about elevators lifting Thor’s hammer?

If Steve was so concerned about Tony’s welfare, supposedly being glad Tony wasn’t alone and offering to help, then why had he hidden the truth about his parents’ deaths from Tony? Why did he nearly kill him? (The paralyzing fear that Tony felt when he’d realized that, if he’d still had the arc reactor, Steve would have killed him - making him suffer an agonizing death as the shrapnel shredded his heart, unable to get help because the suit would have been without power - had fueled a new set of nightmares that had Tony jolting awake, screaming, every night). He had thought Steve was going to bash his head in or cut it off with the shield, and in his more masochistic moments, Tony wondered if that would have been a better outcome: killing him outright instead of letting him live, having lost nearly everything but the guilt.

Next to Steve’s letter, the burner phone he’d sent lay innocuous on the desk. It was adorable that Steve thought Tony didn’t know where he was or that Tony wouldn’t be able to get ahold of him whenever he wanted (Same thing with Bruce; did people really think Tony couldn't track his own tech?). He was tempted to destroy the burner phone, but the worst part was, Tony knew there was a bigger threat coming and it would take all of them to defeat it and protect the Earth. And Tony knew that once again, he would compromise and extend a hand to Steve, asking for his help. What burned, what dug the knife deep into the place where Tony’s heart had been broken by Steve’s betrayal, was the fact that Steve knew Tony would come begging for his help, and even made that easier by sending a phone. Even after everything, Steve probably thought he was still Tony’s friend and that rendering help would forgive all of his sins. Tony knew he would be tempted, drawn in by Steve’s magnetic personality, into being fooled that Steve actually cared. He’d just be setting himself up for more pain and betrayal. But if that's what it took to keep the people on Earth safe, then Tony would do it, regardless of the personal cost. That’s what a hero would do and to his dying breath, Tony would never stop trying to be worthy of that title, no matter what anyone else thought of him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve had his turn to explain himself. Now it's Tony's turn. It's not going to go well for Steve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently, I'm not over my frustration at how the MCU treats Tony. I read a transcript of Steve's letter and got pissed off all over again. And since Steve still isn't really talking to me, you get a chapter of Tony responding to Steve's letter.
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who left kudos and comments. I'm overwhelmed by the response to this fic. I guess it's some sort of group therapy. ;-) I haven't had a chance to respond to all of your comments, but I will try to soon; real life has been getting in the way.
> 
> I'm not sure how many chapters this will be, but I'd like to come to some sort of resolution with all of the characters. The problem is that Tony is the only one talking to me right now. I'm still struggling with Steve's rationale, but I'm working on it.
> 
> Also, google docs, my keyboard, and my iPad are in some sort of conspiracy to write gibberish, including random capitalization and seriously crazy autocorrect (like changing what was supposed to be "her" into "Reuters." I don't even...). Anyways, I tried to catch all of the crazy mistakes, but I missed one, please let me know.

Steve stared out of the window, lost in thought. He hadn’t been in Wakanda long, and though he appreciated T’Challa’s generosity, he was already feeling homesick. Sadly, returning home wasn’t an option right now, and he wasn’t sure when it would be.

His musings were interrupted when Sam knocked on the door. “Steve?”

Sighing, Steve turned around to face the other man. “Yeah, Sam?”

Sam frowned. “You okay?” he asked in his therapist voice. Steve was starting to hate that voice; he seemed to be getting it a lot lately.

Steve gave a lopsided smile, trying reassure his friend. “I’m fine. What’s up?”

Still frowning, but apparently satisfied for the moment, Sam said, “A drone arrived. Stark-tech. We tried to access it, but it says it needs your fingerprints.”

Now it was Steve’s turn to frown. “Stark?” he asked. He hadn’t expected Tony to respond to his letter, at least, not so soon; he knew it would take time before Tony calmed down. Not giving Sam a chance to respond, he strode out of his room, heading to the common room of the quarters T’Challa had given the exiled superheroes. Behind him, Sam followed, making a sound of exasperation; Steve didn’t have to look at him to know Sam was rolling his eyes.

In the common room, Wanda, Clint, Scott, and T’Challa stood in a circle, staring at the Stark-tech drone hovering in the middle of the room. Pushing past them, Steve crouched down and placed his thumb against the touchpad. The drone chirped and Steve stood, waiting for the message to appear.

He didn’t have to wait long. Within seconds, the drone projected a holographic image of Tony Stark. He had on his trademark smirk, but his eyes, instead of being amused, were cold and flinty. “Hi, Rogers. I got your letter; thanks for yet another reminder of what a manipulative bastard you are.” Steve winced; Tony definitely hadn’t calmed down yet. Unaware of the recipient's reaction, the projection continued, “Since you were so kind as to send a letter to explain yourself - a little late for that, by the way - I thought I’d return the favor. I considered coming in person, but we both know that that would only make things worse. And you got your say without interruption; now it’s my turn.”

Around him, everyone was looking at him in surprise. They hadn’t known he’d sent the letter and burner phone to Tony. Steve knew that all of them (except T’Challa) were still upset with Tony and he hadn’t wanted to fight with them about it. Plus, he hadn’t yet told them about Bucky’s role in Tony’s parents’ deaths or his own role in Tony finding out. Ignoring them, Steve focused on Tony’s projection.

“Oh, how am I? Thanks for asking. No, wait; you didn’t ask. Too bad. I’m telling you anyway.” Tony’s sarcasm was in fine form. Steve had to force himself from not wincing again; he had a feeling he was going to be doing that a lot. Tony continued, “I’ve been busy. I’ve been trying to prepare for the big attack we know is coming. We’re a little short-handed, so it’s been tough. I’ve been looking for superheroes who don’t think they’re above the law. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m actually trying to recruit the Sorcerer Supreme, Stephen Strange. I’m hoping my luck with people named Steven improves, though since his named is spelled differently, it might work out better,” he commented flippantly.

“I’ve also been doing the talk show circuit, news programs, government hearings, etc., etc., trying to calm people down. See, since you and your friends assaulted normal, everyday people who were just trying to do their jobs, everyone’s terrified you’re going to come after them next.” 

Steve closed his eyes for a moment, letting the guilt wash over him. Tony had a valid point. Steve didn’t regret helping Bucky, but he did regret hurting the people who had been trying to take Bucky in. At the time, he just hadn’t seen a way to avoid the violence.

The projection of Tony continued in a mocking tone, “You should feel proud, though: this is the first time I can remember in a long time that both sides of the political spectrum and the media have united against a common enemy. Who knew it would be Captain America? Oh, sorry; I forgot. You gave that up. Just as well, because you don’t deserve it,” Tony finished acidly.

Steve looked down as everyone except T’Challa exploded in anger around him. Not wanting to deal with it right now, he waved at them to get them to be quiet, as he raised his eyes back to the projection.

“By the way, the Stark Relief Fund is paying Germany and Romania to compensate them for the damage you caused, including helping those you injured and the families of those who died. I’m hoping that by proactively making payments, they won’t sue. Or, rather, they won’t sue the Avengers. They can sue you all they want and some of them have said they’re going to. Not sure how you’ll end up paying any damages, because I won’t do it; your free ride is over.” 

Steve felt another stab of guilt at the reminder that Tony had not only funded the Avengers, but had also taken care of the damage caused during their battles. But he didn’t have time to dwell on it as Tony continued. 

“But back to the previous subject: everyone’s even more scared of superheroes right now. There’s talk of making the Accords stricter. Because it wasn’t hard enough before, trying to protect the public, now everyone is paranoid and they’re tying our hands even more. Wasn’t it Natasha who argued for signing onto the Accords now so we still had one hand on the wheel? Yeah, well, now, not only do we not have a hand on the wheel, we’ve been stuck in the back seat. I guess I should just be glad we’re still in the car.”

Steve frowned at the mention of Natasha; he wasn’t sure what had happened to her after she let him and Bucky leave the airport. Even though T’Challa had changed his mind and welcomed Steve and Bucky into his home, Steve wasn’t sure how the king felt about Natasha, considering she’d shot him while letting Steve and Bucky escape. He hoped that T’Challa would forgive her and that she’d join them in exile; he missed her and he knew Clint did, too.

He also couldn’t discount Natasha’s point. Even though he’d never intended to sign, being able to influence the Accords could have worked out in the favor of those superheroes who did sign. Being shut out of the process entirely could lead to an untenable situation. But that wasn’t his fault; the people in charge of the Accords were probably using him as an excuse to tighten their grip. If it hadn’t been him, they’d have found another excuse.

“Making the Accords stricter isn’t the only thing people are talking about. You see, a lot of people - including me - are pissed off that you broke the law and hurt innocent people but have suffered virtually no consequences. So they’ve been trying to come up with some for you. They’re getting rather creative. As I already said, there’s talk of lawsuits, but that’s just the start.” 

“Let’s start with the consequences for Maximoff.” Steve looked over at the young woman, who paled when Tony mentioned her name (her _last_ name - it hadn’t escaped Steve’s attention that Tony was using their last names and not their first names). Despite Wakanda’s state-of-art telecommunications systems, they hadn’t really been paying attention to international news, not eager to find out what people were saying about them. It had been bad enough about Wanda, before; who knew how bad it would be now?

“I know you think she’s a kid, but she actually isn’t; she’s an adult. Not that that really makes a difference, because this is the country that, until just a few years ago, would sentence minors to death or automatically sentence them to life without parole if they were convicted of certain crimes. But things haven’t gotten that bad yet.” 

Steve frowned. There was no need to bring that up, other than to bait Wanda. He’d expected better of Tony, but this entire letter seemed to be about Tony getting petty revenge against his former teammates.

Oblivious to Steve’s disapproval, Tony said, “So, consequence number one for Maximoff: the US government revoked her visa. And before you get mad at me for not stopping this, try to understand that I literally could not stop it. I don’t have power of attorney for her and could not act on her behalf. I couldn’t even hire an attorney for her. So that’s done. Consequence number 2: Sokovia is in the process of revoking her passport, and since I’m _persona non grata_ there, there’s nothing I can do to stop that, either.” 

Wanda’s face crumpled before she buried it in her hands. Clint went to her side, putting his arm around her shoulder, trying to comfort her. Steve wasn't sure exactly just how close they had become, but he was glad Clint had taken her under his wing. Wanda’s visa being revoked by the US wasn’t a big surprise, especially since Tony had mentioned it before. But Sokovia revoking her passport was. She hadn’t had a lot of fans in her home country since she’d joined Hydra, but things hadn’t been this bad before.

Back in the projection, Tony glanced down for a moment, then back up, regret written all over his expression. “Pass along my apologies to Wanda, will you?” he asked quietly. Everyone’s eyes went to the projection in shock; Tony Stark apologizing was a rare event. “Rhodey told me off for not explaining the whole house arrest thing to her up front. I see now that it was a shitty thing to do. I just…” he trailed off, gaze far in the distance. “You’re right: she is just a kid. I know she probably couldn’t avoid the news, but I thought I could spare her from worse things. So I didn’t tell her about the threats; Friday intercepted most of them and Vision took care of the rest. I upped the security level in the Avengers compound to keep any vigilantes who wanted to take a shot at her away. I’ve received enough threats myself to know how much it hurts and how scary it can be. I knew she’d find out eventually, but I’d thought if we could get everyone on board and provide a united front before we told her, it would be easier for her - and all of us standing together, I’d hoped, would make the crazy people back down. But I couldn't explain that without telling her about the threats. Quite a catch-22 I made for myself. I guess I thought I owed her, for her parents’ deaths…” he trailed off again, bowing his head.

Not for the first time, Steve wanted to thank Tony and yell at him at the same time. Steve had known there had been threats against Wanda; the Avengers had received threats from the start. But he hadn’t known how bad it was getting or that Tony had been taking action to protect her. Why couldn’t Tony have told him this? Why did Tony insist on doing things himself without involving the rest of the team? Just because they disagreed about the Accords didn’t mean they would disagree on protecting their people. He looked over at Wanda; she was staring at the projection, arms wrapped around herself, obviously shaken. Clint rubbed her shoulder, soothing her, but he looked over and met Steve’s gaze for a moment, his expression grim, before turning his attention back to Wanda.

Tony cleared his throat and continued as if he hadn’t just apologized. “Anyways, consequences. As for Wilson, his military benefits are in danger.” Next to him, he felt Sam tense. Steve’s heart ached for him; he knew how important the camaraderie of the military was to Sam. Losing those benefits meant he would lose much of his connection to the military and his fellow veterans.

“Lang: they’re trying to revoke his parole, _in absentia_ , of course.” Across the room, Scott winced and turned away, not letting anyone see just how much that was affecting him. Steve couldn’t help but feel a little guilty; Scott wouldn’t have become involved if Steve hadn’t asked. He didn’t regret asking, because they were right, but he did regret that the people who followed him were suffering the consequences.

“Barton’s family has been placed in protective custody, and since, contrary to popular belief, I’m not a heartless bastard, they’re staying at one of my safe houses.” Across the room, Clint’s eyes narrowed. He’d been trying to get messages to his family without success; now he knew why. Steve knew that Tony would keep Clint’s family safe because he wouldn’t hold Clint’s actions against his family. But Clint didn’t seem so sure. 

“And for all of you who are American citizens: they’re talking about revoking your citizenship. I’m not even sure how to do that, and I’m pretty sure most of the people arguing for it don’t know, either, but that hasn’t stopped them.” Steve gasped as if he’d been doused in freezing water. The others stood, gaping at Tony’s projection in shock. Steve’s head was spinning. Revoking their citizenship? Just because they refused to sign the Accords? These people were on a bigger power trip than he’d originally thought.

Tony leaned forward, his expression intent. “I can’t do much about any of that, but I am working on one thing: I’m trying to keep you from being added to the terrorist watch lists. No need to thank me; I’m not doing it for you. See, the thing is, I know something bigger is coming and I know we’re going to need all of you. So this is me trying to save myself from having to fight alongside terrorists. Not sure I’ll be able to keep Wanda off the list, though; not even her own country is trying to defend her.”

Beside him, Sam sat down heavily on the sofa and buried his face in his hands. Steve didn’t know how the others reacted because his vision tunneled and he felt as if he was watching himself from far away. Terrorists? They weren’t terrorists. What was wrong with these people? The worst part was that Tony didn’t seem to think that it was wrong for his former teammates to be placed on the terrorist watch list. Was he so selfish that he’d vindictively watch as they were branded terrorists?

“There is one bright side, though,” Tony continued as if he hadn’t just dropped a massive bombshell. “Barnes is being rehabilitated in public opinion. We’ve been playing up the war hero and brainwashed aspects, arguing that he wasn't in control of his actions. His new popularity isn’t helping you, though, because you were in control of your actions. Some people are even arguing that Barnes is your victim. I’m trying to get them to add protections for mind control and coercion into the Accords, but thanks to you, that’s an uphill battle.”

Grasping desperately at the one piece of good news, Steve sighed in relief. He didn’t care so much about himself, but he was relieved that the public had stopped seeing Bucky as a criminal.

In the projection, Tony raised his chin and Steve braced himself for a blow. “Give my regards to Barnes. No hard feelings for when he tried to kill me - either time. I don’t blame him for my parents’ murders. That was Hydra. I know I reacted badly, but for that, I blame you. You kept it from me. And what’s really frustrating about that is, even though he tried to kill me while escaping UN custody, I still broke the Accords and went to Russia to help both of you. If I’d known that my parents had been murdered before Zemo started playing that video, I…well, I guess we’ll never know, will we?” he asked bitterly.

Now the others were staring at him in shock and Steve felt his face heat up. This wasn’t how he wanted the others to learn about Bucky’s involvement in Tony’s parents’ deaths, or that Steve had withheld the truth from Tony. From the scowl on Sam’s face, Steve knew he was in for it later.

“Zemo played us. And you let him. It’s sad that a total stranger figured out that you knew my parents had been murdered but hadn’t told me. Makes me wonder what else I’ve missed about you. But if you had just told me, he wouldn’t have been able to drive a wedge between us. He wouldn’t have been able to show me that a teammate had betrayed me because you wouldn’t have betrayed me,” Tony said, nearly shouting in anger.

Once again, Steve felt the guilt wash over him. He wasn’t sure, either, how Zemo had figured it out, but it was disturbing that he had. And Tony was right: if Steve had just told him, things wouldn’t be so bad now.

“I still can’t figure out why you didn’t tell me,” Tony continued, clearly furious. “In your letter, you said you were sparing yourself. From what? You don’t say. Were you sparing yourself from having to witness my grief at finding out my parents had been murdered? From having to tell a teammate you had a mutual enemy who had hurt members of both of our families? Or maybe you were sparing yourself from having to act like a friend or a teammate or even a decent person,” he spat.

“And then you go on with the extremely patronizing, ‘Hopefully one day you can understand.’ Do you even listen to yourself?” he hissed incredulously. “That’s not something you say when you’re sorry for what you did. That’s what you say when you think you’re right and you think I’ll come around to what you think. ‘Hopefully one day I can understand’? Understand what? That you have a lazy, half-assed excuse for not telling me about my parents’ murders? That I rank really low on your hierarchy of people you’re honest with? That no matter what I do, you will always think you’re better than me? That Saint Steve is always right and I should just fall in line with the rest of your cult of personality?”

Horrified, Steve stared at the projection. That hadn’t been what he’d meant at all. How could Tony think that?

Eyes blazing with fury, Tony continued with his rant. “Also: fuck you. You get so high and mighty about me not sharing things with the team but you deliberately withhold information about _my_ parents from me. I’m not sure why I’m surprised at your hypocrisy and double standards since you seem to think you’re above having to do what everyone else does.”

Steve opened his mouth, wanting to deny the accusations, even though Tony wasn’t here to witness Steve’s denials. He knew he should have told Tony, but that didn’t mean that Tony also wasn't at fault when he withheld information from the team. But he didn’t get a chance to speak because Tony wasn’t stopping.

Tony shook his head in disgust. “I almost wish Dad was still alive just so he could see you for who you really are. So he could see how he’d been deceived and tricked into thinking you’re a good man. Dad didn’t believe in much, but he believed in you. It seems his faith was misplaced.” 

Jaw tense and eyes glassy with unshed tears, his voice hoarse, Tony rasped, “It seems mine was, too. I followed you and I don’t follow many people. I trusted you and I trust even fewer people. I thought you were my friend. I was wrong.” He said it with such certainty that Steve knew Tony believed their friendship was over. 

That was the final blow. He’d remained standing throughout Tony’s tirade, but that final accusation was enough to sap the strength from his legs. He sank down, missing the sofa behind him and landing on the floor. Beside him, Sam put his hand on Steve’s shoulder, but Steve shrugged it off. He didn’t want comfort right now; he needed to feel the pain. He needed to feel how his friendship with Tony had been completely shattered.

But Tony wasn’t done. “I don’t know who you’re trying to fool, but if it’s me, it won’t work anymore. You told me the Avengers are my family, maybe more so than they are yours. Really? What Avengers? Are they hiding? Let’s count them, shall we?” He held up two fingers. “There are two here in the Compound with me, but Rhodey was my friend long before the Avengers. And Vision; well, if you consider him JARVIS junior, then he also pre-dates the Avengers.” 

“So I have 2. How many do you have?” On his other hand, Tony started counting off with his fingers. “Let’s count your new roommates first: there’s Wilson, Maximoff, Lang, and Barton. That’s 4. Romanoff is on your side, too; let’s be honest: she never sided with me. She’s a pragmatist and she chose the side that was more likely to win. If anything, she made her choice in spite of me. So that’s 5,” he said, holding up all five of his fingers. “Plus, you have Barnes and T’Challa, not actually Avengers, I admit, but if we’re allocating family and friends, we definitely have to include Barnes and may as well include your new landlord. That takes you up to 7, which means I need another hand, but that’s okay because there are 3 unused fingers on the hand counting my Avengers. If my math is right - and it always is - 7 is more than 2. I know you’re not an engineer or a scientist, but I would have thought even you could do basic subtraction. So where is this Avengers family that’s more mine than yours?”

Steve couldn’t help but wince at Tony’s demonstration. He’d been trying to convince Tony that he wasn’t alone, but apparently that had backfired.

In the projection, Tony abandoned sarcasm for righteous anger. “And you don’t get to talk about my family, considering that you withheld the truth about the people who were my family: my parents. Do you have any idea…” he trailed off, slumping in his seat, the anger visibly draining out of him. “I didn’t know,” he whispered. “I thought they’d died in a car accident. I didn’t even have a reason to look for any info on them in Hydra’s files because I thought it was an accident. And it wasn’t.” 

Looking straight at the camera, as if he were looking straight at Steve, he demanded, “Do you know how often I think about the last time I saw them alive? How much I wished I’d told them I loved them? Do you know how much I would give for a second chance with them? To hear my mother play the piano one more time? To try to talk with my father and work things out? Just to see them and hear their voices again? I’ll never get that chance. I’ve mourned them for twenty-five years, but now….” He shook his head, a tear escaping, slipping down his cheek. “It’s like I lost them all over again. If that wasn’t bad enough, I now know that I’ve let their murderers walk free for decades. And how I found out…I had no warning. Just a video showing my parents being murdered. You stood next to me, you knew what was coming, and you still said nothing,” he hissed, slamming his palm down onto the table in front of him. “You even tried to deny it when I asked. Those aren’t the actions of a friend.”

Steve shifted, bringing his knees up to his chest, so he could rest his head on his knees and hide his face from the others. He couldn’t defend himself from Tony’s accusations.

“Honestly, I’m not sure how to get over your betrayal, or if I’ll ever actually be able to. I don’t see how I’ll ever be able to trust you again,” Tony said. “I can only hope that, when we end up fighting alongside one another again - because I know we will - I’ll be able to push past it and pretend that everything’s okay so we can work together. But as soon as the battle is over, I won’t pretend anymore. I won’t be able to.”

Sam put his hand on Steve’s shoulder again, but this time, Steve let him. He needed the comfort. He hadn’t thought things between him and Tony were this bad. He knew it wouldn’t be easy, but he’d thought that they’d eventually be able to recover their friendship. Now he had to wonder whether that would even be possible.

In the projection, Tony started again, his voice strong and confident. “I hope you’re enjoying your vacation from reality, but the rest of us have to live in the real world. And yes, it’s not pretty - it’s messy and sometimes unjust things happen. But that doesn’t mean we check out altogether; we don’t run away when we don’t like what’s happening. We work within the system to fix the wrong things and make it better for everyone, not just for ourselves. The only people you’re doing any good for are yourself and your fellow fugitives.”

“If we’d had you on our side - on the side of the law - we could have negotiated better terms. We could have used the moral weight of Captain America to convince people we could do the right thing without close supervision. But by not following the law, by following your own agenda and hurting innocent people who got in your way, you tarnished Captain America and all that he stood for. And you damaged the rest of us, too.”

Steve closed his eyes at Tony’s accusations. All he wanted was to be a good man and live up to the promise he had made to Dr. Erskine. But could Tony be right? Had Steve failed to live up to the ideal Captain America embodied? And had his failure hurt the people he should have been working alongside?

"Take a good look in the mirror, Rogers. What do you see? When I look, I see a man who failed. I see a man who tries but keeps making mistakes that end up hurting others. But you know what else I see? I see a man who gets up after he falls. I see a man who keeps trying no matter how many times he fails. I may be wrong; I may make the wrong choices. But I’m not going to stop. And I’m not going to run away. Can you say the same?” he demanded just before the projection winked out, leaving the room in stunned silence. 

Steve had to admit to himself that no, he couldn’t say the same. And the shame he felt on realizing that meant he couldn’t face his friends right now. Pushing himself to his feet, he left the room, ignoring their calls. He needed to be alone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam’s turn. Sam actually kind of pissed me off during CA:CW (except for his scenes with Bucky; Sam and Bucky is my new favorite bromance). But Sam started talking to me, while Steve is still being very stubborn and is mostly refusing to talk to me. Thankfully, Steve is talking to Sam. :-) But it’s still not going well for Steve (I swear I will eventually redeem him, but I just keep finding more and more things he did wrong).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay; I went out of state to visit family. Plus, now is the busiest time of year for me at work and that should last for at least another month. And I just learned a younger cousin died unexpectedly this weekend; we weren’t close, in fact, I barely knew him, but it’s still a shock. I’m stuck in a different state and am out of the loop and not knowing what happened is driving me crazy. Finishing this was a distraction from that. But because of the craziness, I’m not sure how quickly I’ll be able to update again.
> 
> Also, I will respond to everyone's comments soon. I've just been buried and haven't had the chance. But everyone is leaving such wonderful comments and there are such interesting discussions going on, I wanted to let everyone know how much I appreciated it.
> 
> There is a tiny amount of Steve/Tony UST. Feel free to ignore if you prefer. Also, I know I’m ignoring Sharon, but I just don’t get her character and the Steve/Sharon seems forced to me (though it did give us one of the best scenes in the movie, with Sam and Bucky giving Steve the bro nods after the kiss).

Since Tony’s message had finished and Steve had fled from the room, T’Challa had left to attend to official business, Scott had disappeared, and Clint was still comforting Wanda, probably as a way to avoid dealing with his own problems. Sam had just stayed in the common room, trying to wrap his mind over the events of the past few weeks and the information about those events that he had just learned.

When the Accords had first been proposed, he had known there was a policy argument to be made on both sides, and he had made a few arguments against them himself. But, to be honest, he hadn’t been too concerned with policy. Instead, it was personal.

For Sam, everything had been about loyalty. He’d sided with Steve because he had to back up his partner and he wouldn’t let Steve down like he had Riley. And Sam had known that Steve had had no choice but to back up Bucky; Sam knew all too well the grief and guilt that came from letting your partner fall and he knew Steve had been battling the same since Bucky fell from that train. If Sam had another chance to help Riley, he’d take it in a heartbeat. He couldn’t fault Steve for taking the chance when it had presented itself. Even more, Steve had made the right call on Bucky from the start; not only had Bucky not been guilty of the UN bombing, he had been able to temporarily overcome his brainwashing and tell them about the other super soldiers.

But had they gone about it the right way? Was it the right choice to go it (relatively) alone and work against the authorities? When Bucky had first revealed the existence of the other super soldiers, Sam and Steve had considered going to Tony for help, ultimately deciding not to because of the Accords. But after learning the truth about Bucky’s non-involvement in the UN bombing, Tony had ended up going out to the Raft to ask for information that would allow him to help Steve, ultimately going behind Ross’ back, violating the Accords himself, to provide that help. Sam now had to wonder whether they had underestimated Tony and his commitment to doing the right thing. Should they have reached out to him before going rogue? If they had, would Sam and the others who sided with Steve now be facing such serious consequences?

Steve hadn’t said much about what happened in Siberia - merely that the other super soldiers were no longer a problem and that the man who had been manipulating events behind-the-scenes had been apprehended. But he had been quiet on what had actually happened, especially on what had happened with Tony.

Now having seen Tony’s message, he realized that Tony was far more upset than Sam had previously thought, especially considering that the last time Sam had seen Tony, Tony had been trying to help Steve. From the start, although Tony had seemed to have a personal interest in the Accords - namely his guilt - he had made policy arguments about accountability. Now, however, Tony’s anger was personal in a different way, about competing loyalities and personal betrayal.

As Steve’s friend, Sam felt an instinctive loyalty towards Steve and a desire to protect him. So Sam had not appreciated Tony’s comments attacking Steve. But although he didn’t know Tony all that well, Sam couldn’t help but notice the pain and hurt clearly radiating behind everything Tony had said. For a man notorious for hiding behind masks, Tony’s feelings had been obvious.

Steve personally reaching out to Tony - behind everyone’s backs - and his refusal to defend himself from Tony’s attacks, even to the sympathetic audience of his friends, was telling. There was far more to this story than Steve had told them. Even though Sam was pretty sure he’d figured it out, he needed to hear it from the man himself. Deciding that he’d given Steve enough time to calm down and sort himself out, Sam went in search of the super soldier.

He found Steve in his room, sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall, staring out of the floor-to-ceiling window in front of him. He was curled up, with his knees against his chest, in a far more defensive position than Sam had ever seen him in before. As he approached, Sam saw that Steve’s eyes were swollen and red, and tear tracks ran down his cheeks. For a man who normally kept tight control of his emotions, Steve’s open display of his grief made it obvious that this situation was affecting Steve much more than he’d let on before.

Sam didn’t say anything, just sat down next to Steve and put a hand on his shoulder momentarily, just to let Steve know that Sam was there for for him, whenever Steve was ready to speak. Sam wasn’t sure how long they sat there; he just let his thoughts drift, trying not to think about Tony’s news.

After a while, Steve finally stirred. “He’s right,” he said in a hoarse voice.

Sam deliberately didn’t look at him directly as he asked, “Right about what?” as neutrally as he could, remembering that Steve had mentioned how much he hated Sam’s “therapist” voice.

“Zemo played us because I let him. I wasn’t Tony’s friend. I wasn’t protecting him; I was just protecting myself. And when things got bad, instead of staying and fighting for what I believed in, I ran.” 

He sounded so defeated, Sam chose his next words carefully. “Do you regret protecting Bucky?”

“No.” Steve’s response was immediate and emphatic. “But now I’m wondering if I went about it the right way. And I’m trying to figure out why being Bucky’s friend meant I couldn’t also be Tony’s friend.”

“And how weren’t you Tony’s friend?” he asked, again neutrally, still watching Steve only from the corner of his eye.

Steve glanced at him sharply. “Don’t tell me you haven’t figured it out.”

Sam finally turned to face Steve and nodded. “I have. But considering I followed you, broke the law, ended up in prison, and am now in exile, I think I deserve to hear it from you.”

Steve winced and deflated, hanging his head. “Yeah, you do,” he admitted quietly. He stayed silent a moment, before shifting so his back was against the wall and he was facing Sam. Leaning his head back against the wall, he took a deep breath and began.

“I never told you how Natasha and I first found out that Hydra had infiltrated Shield. We’d followed clues out to Camp Lehigh, the place where I did my initial Army training. In a hidden basement of one of the buildings, we found an old Shield facility. We thought it was deserted, but some old computers came to life. Apparently, Arnim Zola, Red Skull’s right hand man during the war, put himself into a computer in the 1970s, creating an artificial intelligence. Zola told us about Hydra’s existence within Shield and said that when history did not cooperate with Hydra, history was changed. When Natasha pointed out that Shield would have stopped them, Zola said that ‘Accidents will happen.’ As he said that, an image of Howard Stark’s obituary flashed on the screen, followed by a photo of him slumped over in the driver’s seat of his car. Then a photo of Nick Fury, who we knew had been attacked by the Winter Soldier and, at the time, thought was dead, flashed on the screen.” 

Sam nodded slowing, taking in the new information. “But you never told Tony,” he said; he didn’t ask because they both knew he already knew the answer. 

Steve closed his eyes. “I never told Tony,” he agreed.

When nothing more was forthcoming, Sam rolled his eyes and prompted, “And you didn’t tell Tony because…”

Steve opened his eyes, meeting Sam’s gaze for a moment before looking down. “I’m not sure,” he said. “I told myself I wanted to spare him the grief. It had been decades ago and there was nothing anyone could do about it now.”

Sam nodded, pretending to think it over. The proper response was pretty obvious. “You realize that’s bullshit, right?” he asked bluntly.

Steve laughed ruefully. “Yeah, I know.”

Realizing that his role in this conversation apparently was to drag the information out of Steve, Sam again prompted, “And you really didn’t tell Tony because…”

Steve sighed. “I think I didn’t want it to be true. I think I was afraid Bucky was involved and I didn’t want to pit the two of them against one another. And I didn’t want to have to choose between them. But by not telling Tony, I guess I actually did choose Bucky over Tony.”

Sam nodded; he couldn’t disagree with that. But he still didn’t know the full story. “So what actually happened in Siberia?” he asked. “I told Tony where you’d gone because he genuinely seemed to want to help.”

“He did,” Steve admitted quietly. “When he first showed up, he told me that Ross didn’t know he was there and he wanted to keep it that way so he didn’t have to arrest himself,” he said with a small, fond smile. “I had both of them at my side. We weren’t fighting one another anymore; we were going to fight together. And it felt good. It felt right in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time.” He frowned, his good mood extinguished as he continued, “Then we found the other super soldiers, but they were all dead. Each one of them had been shot in the head, still in the cryogenic-stasis chambers. And then Zemo started talking to me.”

Steve bowed his head. “Zemo said he had been studying me. He noticed that there was green in my eyes and said it was nice to see a flaw in me. I asked whether this was all because he was from Sokovia and he replied that Sokovia had been a failed state long before the Avengers arrived. And then he said that an empire brought down from outside will rise again, but an empire that dies from within stays dead.” 

Here, Steve paused. When he started speaking again, it was if he was struggling to get the words out. “He said he had lost everything and now I would lose everything, too. Then Zemo started playing a video. Tony said he knew the road shown in the video, but before either of us could say more, the video showed a car crash…” he trailed off.

Steve looked up and Sam was surprised by the amount of pain reflected in his eyes. “At the time, I didn’t let myself think about it too much. In the war, I learned to compartmentalize things so I could complete the mission. So I didn’t let it affect me. But it was bad. Howard and I weren’t the closest of friends, but we were friends. He provided a lot of technical support to me and the Commandos, just as Tony provided to the Avengers. He deserved better than to be murdered, and so did his wife. And Bucky deserved more than to be forced to murder people in cold blood,” he choked out. 

Visibly pulling himself together, Steve continued, “I knew how volatile the situation could become, so I was watching Tony and Bucky more than I was watching the video. But as the video kept playing, Bucky looked ashamed and guilty, which set my alarm bells ringing. Tony,” Steve paused. Shaking his head, he continued, “Tony was devastated. I’ve never seen him so upset. After the car crashed, Howard had crawled out of the car towards Buck - towards the Winter Soldier,” he corrected. “The Winter Soldier hit him in the head a couple times, apparently killing him, before putting him back in the driver’s seat. Then the Soldier walked around to the passenger side and killed Tony’s mother.”

Sam sat back, trying to imagine what it must have been like to see your parents being murdered, especially if you'd had no idea they had been murdered. It made him sick just to think about it. He wasn’t sure how he’d react in that situation, but he probably wouldn’t have reacted well. And considering that in this situation, the person who had actually killed Tony’s parents was in the same room…

“Tony attacked Bucky, didn’t he?” Sam asked. 

Steve nodded wearily. “He lunged towards Bucky, but I held him back. And then Tony asked me whether I had known. I told him I hadn’t been sure it was Bucky.”

Sam winced. “I hate to tell you this, Steve, but that sounds like you were trying to avoid answering the question.”

Jaw tight, Steve nodded again. “I know. And Tony knew, too. He told me not to shit him. So I had to admit that yes, I knew.”

Frowning, Sam leaned forward and pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “So in just a few minutes, Tony learned that his parents had been murdered, saw his parents be murdered, realized that the man who murdered his parents was in the same room, and discovered that one of his friends kept all of this information from him, right?” he asked.

Flinching, Steve nodded. “Right,” he confirmed.

Sam just shook his head in disbelief. What a cluster. “So what did Tony do next?”

Steve sighed. “He backhanded me across the room and attacked Bucky. So I attacked Tony to stop him. The three of us just kept fighting. I tried to delay Tony long enough for Bucky to escape, but Tony kept cutting off Bucky’s escape routes. Towards the end of the fight, I said I was sorry and told Tony that Bucky was my friend.”

When Steve again fell silent, Sam prompted, “And Tony responded…”

Steve closed his eyes, biting his lip, before looking up at Sam, pain clear on his features. “He said, ‘So was I,’” Steve whispered.

Sam…didn’t know how to respond to that. It sounded pretty definitive. What do you say to someone who lost a friend, primarily through their own fault? 

Lost in memories, Steve continued, “Bucky had been attacking Tony, who used his repulsor and took off Bucky’s metal arm, knocking him unconscious and out of the fight. Then I started hitting him, over and over. Tony finally used the repulsor on me and told me to stay down. But we fought again and I managed to get him on the ground. I hit his helmet with my shield and it came off so I was able to see Tony’s face. I lifted my shield over him again and Tony raised his arms over his head to block my blow. But I hit the arc reactor instead, destroying it and powering down the suit.”

For the second time in this conversation, Sam felt sick. He’d seen both Steve and Tony fight, but never with the ferocity Steve just described. Even during the fight at the airport in Leipzig, things hadn’t been that bad. Tony must have thought Steve was going to kill him; Sam couldn’t imagine ever thinking that about a teammate and friend. “What happened next?” he asked quietly.

Steve looked at him, eyes glassy and his expression empty. “I got up, helped Bucky up, and started to walk away. From the ground, Tony yelled that the shield didn’t belong to me; his Dad had made it and I didn't deserve it.”

It hadn’t escaped Sam’s notice that, when Steve broke them out of the Raft, he hadn’t been in uniform and hadn’t had the shield. Sam hadn’t seen the shield since Leipzig and had been wondering what had happened to it. He wasn’t the only one; shortly after they arrived in Wakanda, Clint had asked about it, but Steve had just shaken his head and hadn’t answered. “So what did you do?” he asked, genuinely curious.

“I dropped it on the ground and continued to help Bucky out. Tony didn’t follow us or say anything more. Bucky and I met up with T’Challa, who brought us here.”

Surprised, Sam blurted, “You just left it there? And Tony, too?” He knew how much the shield meant to Steve. And without a working suit, how had Tony made it home without Ross finding out he’d been in Siberia? Sam knew Rhodey wouldn’t have hesitated to break the Accords to get Tony, but Rhodey was out of commission.

Steve glared at him. “The shield isn’t as important as Bucky. And considering Tony had been trying to kill us, I didn’t feel any obligation to help him,” he said defensively.

Sam could understand Steve’s attitude, especially considering how ferociously he and Tony had been fighting. But it still struck him as somehow wrong to just leave a teammate behind, even if they’d just been fighting one another - and maybe because of that, because Steve had essentially incapacitated Tony by destroying the suit’s power source. Without a working suit, Tony was no match for a super soldier and was much more vulnerable than the other Avengers would be unarmed. And once they'd all calmed down, they probably could have talked it out. Plus, well…“How did you expect him to react?”

“To what?” Steve asked belligerently.

Sam rolled his eyes in exasperation. Steve was probably the most stubborn person he’d ever met, which was saying something, considering that the Avengers, as a group, were probably the most stubborn people on the planet. When Steve didn’t want to answer something, he’d try to find a way out of it. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said sarcastically. “Maybe to finding out that the Winter Soldier murdered his parents, or that you didn’t tell him Hydra murdered them.”

Steve shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “I don’t know.” 

Not for the first time, Sam felt the urge to shake some sense into Steve; as usual, he resisted the urge because 1) Sam wasn’t a super soldier and probably wouldn't have been able to shake or otherwise move Steve; and 2) Steve was so stubborn and hard-headed, it was probably impossible to force him to see sense. But Sam was still going to try. It was time to use his words. “Steve, man, I love you like a brother, but you can’t deny how badly you treated Tony. I know he was wrong to attack Bucky, but can you really blame him? What would you have done in that situation? Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have tried to avenge your mother’s murder.”

Steve glared at Sam a moment more, before his shoulders slumped, resignation settling over his features. “I’d have probably done the same thing he did,” he admitted in a small voice.

Relieved, Sam shook his head. Finally, some progress. He continued pushing. “And then you sent him a letter.” It was a statement, not a question.

Steve nodded wearily. “Yeah, I did.”

“Why?” That was the $64,000 question, wasn’t it?

“Because…” Steve trailed off. “Because I knew I was wrong not to tell him and I needed to apologize. And I wanted him to know that I didn’t have any hard feelings towards him and that he could count on my help if he needed me.”

Sam couldn’t help it; he snorted in disbelief. “Steve, I’m pretty sure the one who’s justified in having hard feelings is him, not you.”

Steve winced. “I know. It’s just…Tony and I haven’t always seen eye-to-eye, but he is a good man. We got off to a rough start, but I’ve considered him a friend since the Battle of New York. But I guess I haven’t been a very good friend to him. I guess I wanted to try to be a better friend. But now I think Tony might not see me as a friend anymore.”

“Ya think?” Sam asked, exasperated. “Seriously, Steve, if your places were reversed, would you think he was your friend?”

Steve closed his eyes, clearly pained. “I never wanted to hurt him,” he said, not answering the question. “I was so relieved when he showed up in Siberia to help. But then it all went to hell.” He shook his head, angry. “Tony was right,” he repeated. “Zemo played us because I let him. I don’t know how he knew I knew that Tony’s parents had been murdered, and that I hadn’t told Tony. Am I that predictable?” he asked plaintively.

Sam frowned. It did seem a bit far-fetched, but he guessed if you had enough experience analyzing information and people, were mad with grief, and had a lot of time on your hands, you could put the pieces together. Still… “I’m not sure,” he said slowly as the pieces started to come together in his own mind. “I wouldn’t have thought so, but you said that Zemo had studied you. Your friendship with Bucky is common knowledge. If he was able to figure out that Bucky was the Winter Soldier, he’d probably also be able to find out that the Winter Soldier killed Tony’s parents. And you said an AI told you about Hydra and Tony’s father’s death, so your knowledge of those things might have been in the data Natasha released to the world. If Tony never took any action against the Winter Solider, or against Hydra beyond the Avengers’ missions to retrieve the spear, he might have realized that Tony didn’t know his parents had been murdered. But if you knew and Tony didn’t, that would have meant you hadn’t told him.” _Huh_ , he thought as he finished. Somehow, something that seemed far-fetched just a moment ago didn’t seem quite so outlandish now that he’d thought it through.

Across from him, Steve looked thunderstruck. Sam guessed he had never thought about it like that, either. 

For a few minutes, they were both silent, trying to absorb what they’d discussed. For his part, Sam was a lot less angry at Tony than he had been before. His anger had started to abate when he saw how distraught Tony was when Rhodey had been injured; he wasn’t even upset Tony shot him with the repulsor, because he couldn’t deny that he’d have probably done the same if their positions had been reversed. And it wasn’t as if Sam had actually been injured. Being imprisoned in the Raft had stoked his anger again, but it started to fade when Tony showed up at the Raft, trying to help Steve. Now, the sympathy he felt for the billionaire for how he had learned that his parents had been murdered, and that someone he thought of as a friend hadn’t told him, was canceling out a lot of Sam’s remaining anger. 

But Sam wasn’t sure sympathy would be enough to bridge the gap between Tony and the other former Avengers. Clint was still very angry and bitter and Scott, who, despite never having met Tony before the fight in Leipzig, felt the same, apparently having been told anti-Stark stories by Hank Pym. Wanda had never been a big fan of Tony and she was upset about being confined to the compound.

After a few minutes, Steve broke the silence by asking, “Do you think I’ll ever be able to earn Tony’s trust back? To earn his friendship back?”

Sam frowned. “I don’t know, man. That’s a lot to overcome. I think you’d have to do a lot of groveling. But it seems like recent events were just the tip of the iceberg with the two of you. Why is it so important to you?”

Steve looked down. Was he blushing? “I don’t know,” Steve admitted. “It just is.”

That…was not a reaction Sam had expected. He was beginning to wonder whether there was a lot more going on here than any of them knew. But considering the precarious state of Steve and Tony’s relationship, he decided against pressing Steve for more answers right now; no reason to stir up things that might never happen. 

Not waiting for Sam’s response, and apparently trying to distract Sam, Steve continued, “I guess I owe him. He tried to work things out, but I never accepted his offers. He even offered to get more safeguards written into the Accords.”

Sam blinked in surprise. This was news to him. “When did that happen?” he demanded

Startled, Steve looked up at Sam. “When we were in the UN facility in Berlin, before Bucky broke out. He’d been trying to talk me into signing the Accords, even bringing the pens FDR used to sign the Lend-Lease bill; apparently, Howard had them. He said that he didn’t want to see me gone because they needed me. And that nothing that had been done couldn’t be undone. Tony said that if I signed, the previous 24 hours could have been made legit. Bucky would go to an American psychiatric facility instead of being extradited to Wakanda. I agreed, as long as we added safeguards to the Accords.”

Reeling in shock, Sam asked, “So why didn’t you?”

Steve sighed. “Tony admitted that he had Wanda under house arrest at the Compound. I couldn’t believe him; every time I thought Tony was doing the right thing, I found out that he had some other agenda.”

Sam was an even-tempered guy and pretty reasonable; in fact, there were times that Sam was sure that he and Rhodey were the only sane members of the Avengers. It took a lot to make Sam mad, especially at his friends. This…this made him mad.

“We're you ever planning on telling me - or any of the others - any of that?” he asked in a raised voice. Across from him, Steve’s eyes widened in shock; Sam had never been this angry with him before. “From the start, you said you weren’t going to sign the Accords, and I was ok with that, because I trusted you and I thought you were doing the right thing. But then you do a 180 and agree to sign without telling anyone but Tony - and then immediately change your mind to reject them again. I had told you I wanted to be sure we were considering all of our options. You didn’t tell me Tony was willing to retroactively make our actions legit, or that he’d agreed to include safeguards into the Accords. How long did we sit in that room before Bucky broke out? You could have told me. But you didn’t. You didn’t give me the choice of deciding whether those safeguards would be enough for me to sign the Accords. You didn’t give me the choice to wipe my slate clean and make the crimes I’d committed to help you disappear.”

To his credit, Steve looked ashamed. “I’m sorry. I guess I wasn’t thinking. I was angry that I offered to make concessions but that Tony wasn’t.”

If anything, that pissed Sam off even more. “Yes, he did,” he grated out, ignoring how strange it felt to defend Tony’s handling of the Accords, even if he wasn’t as mad at Tony as he had been earlier. “We broke the law and fought the authorities. He offered to make our crimes go away and make them official actions. He agreed to write more safeguards into Accords. And after we fought in Leipzig - after his best friend was badly injured - he still came to the Raft, trying to find a way to help you. How are those not concessions?” he demanded.

Steve stared at him, speechless. Then he stuttered, “But-but he was holding Wanda prisoner.”

Sam took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. It didn’t work very well. “Out of all of the things that happened, that was not the deal-breaker.” At Steve’s angry expression, Sam held up a hand and Steve subsided. “Do I like that Wanda was confined to the Compound? Of course not. But she hadn’t signed the Accords and she isn’t an American citizen, though she was living on American soil. Everyone was blaming her for the deaths in Lagos. Keeping her in the Compound was probably the safest option, for her and everyone else. I don’t even want to think about what would have happened if some idiots attacked her and she had to defend herself. Even though she’d have been justified, it would have just made the situation worse.”

Steve stared at him, looking alarmed, as if that had never occurred to him. Sam resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Steve was brilliant at battle tactics, and at reading his enemies, but he was terrible at predicting how normal people would behave. His idealism meant he thought the best of people in general and he always seemed surprised when ordinary people gave into their darker impulses. But when Steve stayed silent, Sam took that as his cue to move on.

“But what I don’t get,” he said quietly, “is why you protected Bucky and Wanda, but not the rest of us, not _me_. You had the opportunity to make it so that I wouldn’t have been a criminal for helping you. Not only did you not take it, you didn’t tell me it was an option.” And there it was, the point he’d been dancing around the past few minutes as he’d tried to ignore the hurt he’d felt since learning Steve had rejected Tony’s offer to retroactively give their actions official sanction. Of course, he’d had a lot of practice at ignoring his feelings; he’d been able to keep the jealousy he felt over Steve’s friendship with Bucky locked away for months now. He didn’t begrudge Steve his best friend, but it sometimes hurt to know that, no matter how good of friends Sam and Steve were, Steve would always care about Bucky more.

Ignoring Steve’s stricken expression, he re-focused on Steve’s revelations as he drove the point home. “Just a few hours after Tony offered those concessions, we agreed not to contact him about the other super soldiers because he’d signed the Accords. If I had known about Tony’s offers, I wouldn’t have been so quick to reject contacting him, and I’m not sure why, knowing what you did, you were. Knowing now that, even after we fought, he tried to help you, I’m questioning whether we made the right choice,” he said, his voice shaking.

He took another deep breath, trying to calm himself down enough to say what he had to; it hurt, doing this to Steve, who looked shattered, shoulders hunched and tears streaking down his face. But if their partnership - their friendship - was going to survive, they had to face this.

“If we’d gone to Tony immediately, we probably wouldn’t have fought in Leipzig. Clint and Scott wouldn’t have left their families. Rhodey wouldn’t have been so badly injured. And none of us would have been imprisoned in the Raft under such inhumane conditions.” Steve flinched; he may have broken them out of the Raft, but they’d been there for far too long before he did. “We wouldn’t be exiled with the chances of us ever being able to return home slim.”

“But that didn’t happen,” he continued calmly, feeling somewhat detached, as if he was looking at himself from far away. “I made my choice to follow you and break the law because I trusted you; I know that’s why the others did so, too. But none of us knew you hadn’t told us the whole story; none of us knew there might have been another option. I don’t know why you didn’t tell us, but you seem to have a habit of not telling people things they needed to know - things they deserved to know,” he said pointedly as Steve flinched again.

“You need to figure this out, Steve. You need to figure out whether you trust us enough to tell us the things we deserve to know. And you need to figure out why some of us are more important to you than others - why you move heaven and earth for some of us but leave the rest of us in the dark. If you can’t trust us or treat us equally, we can’t be a team because we won’t be able to trust you to lead us.”

With that, he rose and left the room without looking back, ignoring Steve weakly calling his name. He made his way back to his room, thankfully not running into anyone on the way. In his room, he collapsed on his bed, staring up at the ceiling as he started shaking, wondering how the hell they got into this mess and whether they’d ever be able to get out of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally, this chapter ended with Steve asking about becoming Tony’s friend again. Then yesterday, it just popped into my head that Tony wasn’t the only person Steve withheld info from; we never see him tell Sam or anyone else that he almost signed the Accords, or that Tony made concessions. Sam was rather upset to hear that, which led to another 1000+ words. 
> 
> Also, Sam’s reaction to realizing Zemo’s plot wasn’t as far-fetched as he’d thought was actually my own; I’d always considered that a weakness in the script, but once I broke it down, it didn’t seem quite so crazy. If I’m suspending my disbelief to believe superheroes, sentient robots, alien attacks, etc., are possible, I guess I can believe that, too. :-)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve deals with the fallout from Tony’s message and Sam’s ultimatum, and then he comes clean to his fellow exiled superheroes. Plus, T’Challa has a few words of wisdom to share with the others.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steve finally started talking to me! I think I might finally understand why he did what he did. And T’Challa started talking to me, too, allowing me to focus on 2 lines from the movie that really struck me both times I saw it: Wanda’s line about how she can’t control others’ fear; and Steve’s line that Tony signing the Accords tore the team apart. Also, the problem with everyone learning about the events at different times means there's a lot of repetition. Sorry about that.
> 
> I am so sorry for the delay. In addition to everything being extremely crazy, it seemed like there was a conspiracy to stop me from writing this chapter. On three different occasions, Google Docs crashed and deleted several paragraphs that I was unable to recover and had to reconstruct. It also likes adding periods in random places in the middle of sentences and is going so slow that I have to wait for it to catch up to my typing. And it apparently doesn’t believe the word “were” exists because it autocorrects it every time to “we’re” (it even did it in this sentence and when I fixed it, google docs told me it was misspelled). All very annoying.

Steve had spent a restless night wrestling with his demons, going over and over Tony’s message and his conversation with Sam, repeatedly facing the pain and anger in his friends’ expressions with perfect recall thanks to his eidetic memory. Steve wasn’t prone to introspection; he was a man of action, not words. But after recent events, he knew that he needed to take the time to examine his choices and answer some pressing questions before he faced the others.

The truth was that Steve had fucked up. He knew that and accepted it. He should have told Tony about his parents’ murders long before Siberia. But now he was faced with the evidence that his mistakes were far more numerous than he’d originally thought.

Sam was right: Steve had prioritized Bucky and Wanda over the others. He had realized that Tony's offer would have absolved Sam of any crimes he’d committed while helping Steve and that was one of his main reasons for agreeing to sign on, as long as they added sufficient safeguards. But as soon as Tony told him about Wanda’s house arrest, the anger he’d felt at Tony had come back full force and every other consideration had vanished from his mind - even getting Bucky into an American psychiatric facility.

Why had Wanda’s house arrest, as Sam had put it, been the deal-breaker? Why was that the reason he forgot everything and everyone else? During the night, he’d searched his heart and - to his surprise - the answer was obvious: guilt.

Bucky was Steve’s oldest friend and Steve owed him more than he could say. But now he realized that many of his recent actions hadn’t been solely because Bucky was his friend; they were because he felt guilty over Bucky’s fate. Bucky had chosen to follow Steve during the war, but Steve was the one who let Bucky fall. If Steve hadn’t let go, Bucky wouldn't have been captured by HYDRA and wouldn’t have been brainwashed into becoming an assassin. 

Wanda wasn’t really a friend like Bucky was, but she was on his team and he was responsible for her. He couldn’t fix most of the damage she’d suffered in the past, but Steve had been the leader of the Avengers when Ultron had nearly destroyed Sokovia and her twin brother had been killed. The ultimate responsibility for that disaster rested with him (though a voice in his head that sounded a lot like Tony pointed out that Steve hadn’t really faced the consequences for Sokovia; Tony had). And if that wasn’t bad enough, the only reason Wanda had needed to intervene in Lagos was because Steve let himself be distracted; if not for him, she wouldn’t have accidentally pushed the bomb blast into the apartment complex. So Steve was harboring a lot of guilt about her, which caused him to overreact when he had learned that Tony had placed her under house arrest.

This realization - that his actions had been fueled primarily by guilt - chilled him to the core. When Secretary Ross has first proposed the Accords to the Avengers, he’d believed that Tony had chosen to support the Accords because of his own guilt over Sokovia; and because of that, Steve had dismissed Tony’s arguments in favor of the Accords. Steve had also believed that Rhodey and Vision had sided with Tony out of loyalty instead of principle, so he was able to dismiss their arguments, too.

As it turned out, Steve wasn’t so different from Tony after all. He’d believed his own motives for opposing the Accords had been pure: opposing them was the right thing to do because signing the Accords would have let those with unscrupulous motives use the Avengers to further their own agendas. But Steve’s motives hadn’t been pure. He’d been just as blinded by emotions as everyone else. Worse than that, his choices - based on his own personal motives - hadn’t just affected him. Everyone who had followed him became his agents, fighting to assuage Steve’s guilt, not to do the right thing.

Why had Sam and the others followed him? And why hadn’t the other members of the Avengers, the ones who had sided with Tony and the Accords? With the exception of Scott, T’Challa, and Spider-Man, everyone involved in the “civil war” had been Avengers who had fought with Steve as their leader. Sam said he had followed Steve because he trusted him, but hadn't all of the Avengers trusted him, too, even those who sided with Tony? What had Steve done to deserve their trust? Was leading them in battle enough for them to defer to him on things like whether to sign the Accords? Could it have just been trust or was there something else at work?

Steve had willingly called in Clint, Wanda, and Scott to help in the fight, even though two of them had others depending on them. Clint was a great fighter, and Steve had never doubted that he had belonged on the Avengers, but he had a family: a wife and three children, including a baby. Scott had never fought in the big leagues before and he had a daughter. They were 2 normal, non-enhanced family men and Steve called them in, taking them away from their families, to break the law and fight multiple super soldiers. What had he been thinking?

With the benefit of hindsight, it was clear that there was no good way that could have ended. Had Steve really thought that if they stopped the super soldiers, the world would welcome them back with open arms, all previous transgressions forgiven? He must have believed it because he sent that letter to Tony, apparently thinking things weren’t so bad that they couldn’t be fixed with a simple apology and an offer to provide help in the future if needed.

Steve had never believed that the ends justified the means, but wasn’t that what he’d done? His first goal was saving Bucky, which then turned into stopping the super soldiers. The means he’d chosen included breaking multiple laws, fighting law enforcement, and fighting his friends. But as it turned out, the ends he had been fighting for hadn’t happened. The super soldiers had never actually been a threat. Bucky was back in cryogenic storage because he couldn’t trust himself with the brainwashing triggers still in his head. So all of their efforts, and the consequences they were facing because of their actions, had all been in vain. Had it all been worth his friends being imprisoned in the Raft and all of them had being exiled from their homes?

Even acknowledging his own faults, he knew that the other side hadn’t been blameless. His blood still burned with anger at the conditions in the Raft. That alone was enough reason for him to oppose the Accords; even though Ross has said that if they didn’t sign the Accords, their option was to retire, Steve knew that Ross had been waiting for an excuse to imprison the Avengers who didn’t toe the line. But setting aside his anger, he couldn’t deny that all of them had broken the law. And ordinary people who broke the law didn’t have enhanced friends to break them out of prison, or safe havens where they would be safe from imprisonment.

In his message, Tony had raised several questions that now plagued Steve. Did Steve really think he was better than everyone else, as Tony had accused? Did he think he was above the law? And why was he the ultimate authority on what was right? Were the people who disagreed with Steve wrong? Had he become infected by the politics of the day, where disagreements didn’t mean the other people were different, but instead were wrong? These were important questions, and he needed to be able to answer them, but even after a night of soul-searching, Steve wasn’t sure what the answers were. He knew what the right answers were, but he feared that his answers would be the wrong ones. 

It was times like this that Steve missed Bucky the most. Back when they were growing up, and even into the war, Steve had been the one going full steam ahead, often reacting without thinking things through. Bucky had been the one who pulled Steve back, who made him think, and who saved him from himself. Bucky had been the one who called Steve out on his bullshit. Bucky hadn’t been Steve’s conscience, so much as he had been the voice of reason, tempering Steve’s impulsiveness and hot-headedness with cool logic and moderation. Steve hadn’t realized just how much he relied on Bucky to be the voice of reason until Bucky was gone. Had Steve become so used to relying on Bucky to be the reasonable one that he didn’t try to be reasonable himself?

In the Avengers, Tony had been the only one who consistently and directly challenged Steve. It wasn’t as if the others had been pushovers or blind followers, but they had generally agreed with Steve or discussed any disagreements calmly in strategy meetings. Tony, though, had often directly called Steve on his bullshit whenever he wanted to, whether it was in mission briefings or debriefings, during battle, or even when they just crossed paths in a hallway. But no matter whether Tony was right, Steve had always bristled at Tony calling him out. Why had Steve welcomed the challenge from Bucky but not from Tony? Had he been punishing Tony for presuming - unknowingly - to take on Bucky’s role?

On his bedside table, the alarm went off, breaking Steve from his thoughts. He wanted to stay in bed all day, to just pull the blankets over his head and forget the rest of the world existed. But he owed his fellow fugitives the truth. Sighing, he rose from his bed to prepare himself to meet the others.

An hour later, Steve was walking into the common room, where he’d asked all of them to meet him after breakfast. They all knew something was up; both he and Sam looked as if they hadn’t slept a wink, though the others didn’t seem that much better, apparently still coming to terms with the revelations in Tony's message. They were all waiting for him, and though he motioned for all of them to take seats, he remained standing.

When they were all seated and looked up at him expectedly, he took a deep breath to steady himself and said, “I know that Tony’s news was unsettling, but he also hinted at other events you may not know about. I think the easiest way to do this will be for me to give you a brief explanation. I’m sure you’ll have questions and I will give you any details you want later, but please let me get it all out before you start asking questions.”

As he finished speaking, he met each of their gazes as all but one of them nodded in agreement. Clint looked wary, as did Wanda. Scott, who hadn't really known any of them well before Leipzig, looked confused. Sam, who knew what was coming and was the only one who didn’t nod, had an unreadable expression on his face. Knowing that was the best he was likely to get, he started his explanation.

“In his message, Tony said that I hadn’t told him that Hydra murdered his parents. That was true,” he admitted, trying to keep his voice steady. “I found that out when I first learned that Hydra had infiltrated SHIELD, about 2 years ago. I didn’t know for certain, but I knew it was possible - maybe even likely - that the Winter Soldier murdered them. But I never told Tony; I told myself it was to spare him, but the truth is I was trying to protect Bucky, and trying to not choose between them. Somehow, Zemo figured out that I knew but that I hadn’t told Tony. He manipulated events so that Bucky would tell me about the other super soldiers and that Tony would learn that Bucky had been framed for the UN Bombing and would go to Siberia to help me and Bucky. When the 3 of us were in Siberia, Zemo played a video of the Winter Soldier murdering Tony's parents; that’s how Tony found out. Tony asked me whether I had known and I eventually admitted I had. Tony attacked Bucky and then the 3 of us fought until I disabled the Iron Man armor by destroying the arc reactor.”

While he been giving his confession, he’d stared at the wall over his friends’ heads, unwilling to see their reactions. Once he finished, he forced himself to meet their gazes. Wanda, who had never been a fan of Tony, but who knew well the pain of losing family, seemed to be on the verge of tears, her hand covering her mouth. Clint was grim, his jaw tight; he hadn’t been the closest of friends with Tony, but they had been friends. Oddly, Clint had been taking the split in the team personally, with his bitterness primarily aimed at Tony. Steve wasn't sure why Clint had reacted so strongly against Tony or how this news might affect his bitterness. As for Scott, he seemed both confused and horrified. Sam’s expression was still mostly unreadable, but he was looking steadily at Steve, which Steve chose to interpret to mean that he had Sam’s support (he might not have had it, but at this point, Steve would take imaginary support).

So far, they weren’t reacting that badly, but that wasn’t even the worst thing Steve had to confess. There was far worse to come. Taking another deep breath, he closed his eyes. “When we were in Siberia, before he played the video of Tony’s parents’ murders, Zemo said that an empire brought down from outside will rise again, but an empire that dies from within stays dead. The truth is that all of this - the UN bombing, triggering Bucky’s brainwashing - all of it was to tear the Avengers apart. And I let it happen.” He laughed bitterly. “I even helped it along. If I had just told Tony about his parents, this wouldn’t have ended so badly. The team wouldn’t be so badly torn apart and none of you would be facing the consequences. We never would have called the 3 of you in to help if I had just trusted Tony from the start instead of playing games with people’s lives.”

Shaking, he opened his eyes to look at his teammates, bracing himself to see their reactions. All three looked horrified, with Wanda openly in tears. If anything, Clint looked even more grim, his expression closed off as if he had shut down; Steve had seem him do that before when the situation was bad, but it hurt to know that he was the cause of it this time. Scott looked like someone had just killed his puppy. Steve felt sick, knowing he was the reason for their pain.

Grateful they were doing as he asked and letting him get the information out before asking questions, he swallowed hard and continued, “From the start, I opposed the Accords because I didn't trust others not to use the Avengers for their own agendas. And considering some the people in charge, I still think that is a legitimate concern. But what I didn’t tell anyone - not until yesterday,” he added, nodding towards Sam, “was that I almost signed.”

Across from him, Wanda gasped in surprise, but as Steve had requested, she said nothing. Scott seemed more confused than anything, but Clint had no reaction, his face still blank. Steve knew from experience that Clint’s reaction was bad; the calmer and more controlled Clint seemed, the more dangerous he became.

“After Sam, Bucky, T’Challa, and I had been taken into custody, but before Bucky was triggered and broke out, Tony said that nothing that had been done couldn’t be undone; if I signed, everything we did would have been made legit and Bucky would go to a psychiatric center in the US instead of a Wakanda prison. I agreed, because I knew it was the best option for everyone, regardless of what I thought of the Accords,” he said, looking directly at Sam, hoping his friend saw that Steve really had been thinking about him. Sam’s expression softened slightly, and he nodded at Steve acknowledging Steve’s explanation. 

“But I didn’t sign. After I agreed, Tony said that when I signed, both Wanda and I would be reinstated. That was when Tony told me about Wanda’s house arrest. I became angry with Tony and decided I wouldn’t sign.” He looked up at Wanda, who seemed surprised. Next to her, Clint frowned. Scott still seemed confused (Steve was beginning to wonder just how much Scott knew about the Accords and what had happened before Scott joined them in Leipzig; he always seemed confused).

“When I made that decision,” he continued, “I effectively made it for all of us. I never told anyone about Tony’s concessions, not even Sam. I’m not sure why I didn’t, other than that I was angry with Tony. I should have told you,” he said, turning to Sam. “I should have given you the choice. And I'm sorry I didn’t. You deserved better, from both your friend and your team leader.”

Sam slowly nodded, his expression calm. Steve knew that this wasn’t the end of it, and that he was going to have to do more to repair their friendship, but he hoped this would be a good start toward doing so.

Steve turned to face the others. “All of you deserved better,” he told them. “I shouldn’t have kept that information from you. I should have told you that there were other options. And I shouldn’t have led you to believe that Tony wasn’t willing to compromise.” He shook his head. “I don’t really have a valid reason for why I didn’t tell you. In the war, I sometimes had to keep confidential information from my team. This isn’t the same situation and it doesn’t fit, but I’ve been going over and over this in my head, trying to figure out why I did what I did, and that’s what I keep coming back to. Maybe I focused so much on the mission that I dismissed everything else; a kind of tunnel vision. It’s not good enough, I know. I failed all of you and I’m sorry,” he finished, barely holding back his tears. He felt drained and finally sank into a seat as he looked at the others to see their reactions. 

Sam’s expression was still calm and Clint’s expression was still closed off. Scott looked bewildered and a little heartbroken, as if the image of Captain America had been tarnished. Wanda was looking down, not meeting Steve’s eyes.

When they still remained silent, Steve realizing they were still doing as he asked and holding off asking questions until he was done. He steeled himself for the next part.

“I’ve also realized that my motives for opposing the Accords weren’t as pure as I’d thought. I thought that I was doing the right thing, standing up for the little guy against powerful forces that would use the Avengers to hurt them. And that was part of my original motivation. But now I realize that I dismissed the others’ arguments - mainly Tony’s - because I thought they were being ruled by emotions. I thought Tony was letting his guilt make his decisions. But it turns out that I’m not that different from Tony. I broke the law to go after Bucky because I felt guilty; he wouldn’t have been in that position if I hadn’t let go back in 1944. And then I changed my mind about signing the Accords because of you,” he finished, looking at Wanda.

“Me?” she asked, clearly surprised, to the point of forgetting that she had agreed to hold off on asking questions. Considering the circumstances, however, Steve didn't blame her for her reaction.

“You,” he confirmed with a sad smile. “The disaster in Lagos wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t let Crossbones distract me. So when I learned that Tony had you under house arrest at the Compound, I guess I snapped. It was my fault it happened and it was my fault that you were facing the consequences. I let my guilt take over and I rejected Tony’s offer, even though it would have helped Sam and Bucky. And then I drug all of you into this mess.” He paused a moment and then looked directly at Wanda. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked you to leave the Compound to fight with me.”

Angrily, Wanda shook her head. “No, I am glad you did. You may have been letting guilt control you, but I was letting fear control me. It wasn't until Clint arrived that I realized I could not control others’ fear; only my own.”

“But you can control your own actions and how others may perceive you. We cannot judge other people based on their thoughts, but rather only by what they do. Your actions can either give people reason to trust you or reason to fear you,” T’Challa’s strong voice rang out from the doorway to the common room. As everyone turned to face the King, he continued, “There will always be those who are irrational and nothing you say or do will change their minds. But there are also many who are rational, who are looking for reasons on which to make a decision. It is those people who you need to convince: convince them that you are not a danger to them; and that you are worthy of the responsibility and trust they are giving to you.”

Subdued, and a little shame-faced, Wanda looked down and did not respond.

Steve rose as the King walked towards the group. Coming up to stand next to Steve, T’Challa said, “I apologize for interrupting, but I wanted to see how you were doing after receiving Mr. Stark’s message yesterday. But when I heard your conversation, I realized I could not be silent.”

Steve nodded at the other man. T’Challa was being extremely generous in giving them a safe haven; the least they could do was listen to him.

T’Challa continued, “I agreed to the Accords because the threats we face and the choices we must make are bigger than just one person - or even a small group of people,” he added pointedly. “Until recently, I did not put much stock in diplomacy, something my father would tease me about. It is only now, that I have inherited my father’s responsibilities and am facing the complexity of the problems he did, that I realize he was right: this is too much for just one person. And, even as King, I do not have the right to decide for everyone; my role is to be the voice of my people, not to dictate to them. It is only by joining forces and working together that we will be able to overcome the challenge we face.”

While T’Challa made a good point, he was forgetting something. “Not everyone is so humble and wise as you, your highness,” Steve said. “And many of these people - the ones in charge of the Accords who would be telling the Avengers what to do, have agendas.”

T’Challa merely raised an eyebrow, unperturbed. “Everyone has agendas, Captain Rogers, even you. Your agenda was to save your friend - an admirable goal - but one that put you into conflict with the governments and lawful authorities of several countries, as well as your own friends and teammates.”

Steve couldn’t deny that, but he still felt the need to defend himself. “I believe in individuals, your highness. I put my trust in them and they haven’t let me down,” he said, echoing what he said to Tony earlier.

That apparently didn’t impress T’Challa, either. “But what is a group if not many individuals? Why trust people on an individual basis but not when they are in a group? It is true that some groups are corrupt and some engage in what I believe you call ‘groupthink.’ But that is not true for all, yet you act as if becoming part of a group automatically renders the individuals that make them up untrustworthy. Were your Howling Commandos not a group? Was your Strategic Scientific Reserve not a group? Are your Avengers not a group?”

T’Challa had a point, but… “The safest hands are still our own,” he argued. “We couldn’t simply give up control to someone else.”

The King frowned. “I admit I am not an expert in your country, Captain, but is not civilian control of the military a cornerstone of your government? Isn’t your president the commander-in-chief of your military? Isn’t your Congress the only government body with the authority to declare war?”

Steve nodded, trying to ignore the surrealism of discussing the US government with a foreign King, while exiled from the US in the foreign King’s country. “Yes, that’s correct, though the seems to have become common for the president to send troops to fight without a declaration of war,” he finished bitterly

T’Challa’s mouth quirked, betraying his amusement. “I will not debate whether such actions are proper, though I note they are not of recent origin; both the Korean and the Vietnam ‘wars’ were not, strictly speaking, wars, because your Congress did not actually declare war. Regardless, it is the civilian government that decides where to send troops and what those troops’ goal will be. The military leaders on the ground make decisions on how to implement those plans and goals. From what I understand of history, military matters operated the same way during World War II. If that situation is good enough for the American military, and good enough for you during World War II, why is it not good enough for the Avengers now?”

Steve opened his mouth to respond, but stopped when he realized he didn’t have a response. He looked to the others for help but none of them were looking at him, instead looking either at the King or at the floor. Struggling, he finally argued, “But the Avengers aren’t military.” Despite the poor state of their relationship, Steve couldn’t help but think of how Tony would react to Steve’s statement; in better times, Tony probably would have laughed his ass off, but now he’d probably take it as further proof of Steve’s hypocrisy.

T’Challa merely stared at Steve a moment, before apparently deciding not to dignify Steve’s weak attempt at an argument with a response. Instead, the King continued, “I brought you here, less because of your actions, than because of my own. I allowed myself to be consumed with vengeance - and it was only when I saw vengeance consume Mr. Stark that I realized the folly of my own actions. I did not think; I merely acted, and in so doing, I pursued and injured an innocent man. I did not question that he was guilty, but assumed he was. Granting you and your comrades with sanctuary is my way of making up for my earlier actions. But do not interpret this decision as an endorsement of your choices and actions.”

Steve had known from the start that T’Challa hadn’t brought them here because he agreed with them; after all, the King had signed the Accords and fought with Tony in Leipzig. But it was still a shock to hear the man admit it. It brought home the question of whether Steve could count T’Challa as an ally; at this point, he didn’t know.

Not giving Steve a chance to respond, T’Challa continued, “Mr. Stark is a brilliant man who - by his own admission, let his emotions - his shock, grief, and sense of betrayal - cause him to fight, not only a man who had been victimized by the same group who was responsible for his parents’ murders, but also a man he had thought of as a friend; both men for whom he had broken the law to help. But I cannot blame him because I had the same reaction at first; time and distance finally cleared away the haze of pain and anger clouding my judgment. I am lucky that I did not seriously hurt or kill anyone before the haze lifted. I am sure Mr. Stark is similarly relieved that he did not kill you or Sgt. Barnes, though I note that the Iron Man armor is sufficiently powerful that he could have seriously injured or even killed all of you in an instant, if he had so desired.”

It had actually never occurred to Steve that Tony had to have been holding back during the fights in both Leipzig and Siberia. In Leipzig, the only person who left that battle with serious injuries had been Rhodey; no one on Steve’s side had come close to being so badly injured. As for the fight in Siberia, not even two super-soldiers could have stood up to the Iron Man armor if Tony had chosen to unleash the full power at his disposal. It was only when Tony had been pinned that he blasted away Bucky’s mechanical arm, something that could be more easily replaced than Bucky’s remaining flesh-and-blood arm. And while Tony had shot Steve with the repulsor, it hadn’t kept Steve down for long. It was obvious now that no matter how angry and upset Tony had been, he had never been completely out of control.

Unaware of Steve’s realizations, T’Challa continued, “But Mr. Stark and I are not the only ones who were blinded by emotion. I saw it in you, too, Captain, when we first met in Bucharest. You let your friendship with Sgt. Barnes cloud your judgment. I have always thought that the best friends are those who are willing to stand up to you, who will tell you when you are making a poor choice. I admit that I do not know him well, but from what I know of the both of you and your friendship, I imagine he is that type of friend. I cannot believe he would approve of many of your actions done in the name of protecting him: of hurting innocents or betraying another friend.”

Steve winced because the King was right. If Bucky had been in his right mind, he would never had let Steve get away with any of that. Even compromised by decades of HYDRA’s torture and brainwashing, Bucky had still asked whether he was worth everyone Steve had been willing to sacrifice. But it was hard enough admitting that to himself; he couldn’t admit it to the others yet. So instead of responding, he looked down, ashamed, and stayed silent.

When Steve didn’t respond, T’Challa said, “I see that you have many issues that are weighing heavily on your mind. I do not mean to cause you distress but I believe there is another issue that you need to consider that you may have overlooked.”

Filled with a sense of dread, Steve looked up at the other man, not eager to find out what else he had fucked up.

“I found one thing you said in Leipzig curious,” T’Challa said. “When Mr. Stark said that he was trying to save the team, you replied that he had already done so by signing the Accords. I do not understand how his agreement to follow the Accords - how his agreement to follow the law - broke the Avengers. Moreover, he was not the only one who signed the Accords; your friend the Black Widow signed, as did Colonel Rhodes and Vision. Why did you single Mr. Stark out as the one who broke the team?”

With everything else that had happened, Steve had completely forgotten about that exchange. T’Challa had a good point. Looking back to the events before fight on the tarmac, he was shocked to realize that his response had been fueled by a sense of betrayal: he had felt betrayed by Tony choosing to sign the Accords instead of joining Steve. But he hadn’t reacted badly when Natasha had told him that she and some of the other Avengers were going to sign, nor had he felt betrayed by their choice to sign. In fact, he knew that one of Natasha’s reasons for signing was to keep the team together, believing that keeping the team together was more important than how the team stayed together, and Steve respected that. So why had he reacted so badly to Tony’s choice?

With the benefit of hindsight, he could see just how much his emotions had tainted all of his choices. He hadn’t trusted Tony but expected him to trust Steve; but when Tony hadn’t trusted him, Steve had lashed out and had unfairly placed most, if not all, of the blame on Tony. So it was hardly surprising that, by the time Steve had finally told Tony about the other super soldiers, his credibility with Tony had been in tatters and Tony had brushed off Steve’s warning as a distraction.

Suddenly feeling completely exhausted, he looked up at T’Challa to find the King watching him closely, as if appraising him. Apparently satisfied by what he saw, T’Challa nodded once and then said to the group, “All of you are welcome here as long as you need to stay. But I encourage you to take this time to examine your own actions. None of us is perfect and all of us make mistakes. None of you are exempt from that.”

With that, T’Challa left the room. Wanda, keeping her head down and avoiding eye contact, fled from the room just after the King. Clint and Scott were close behind Wanda, but before they could escape, too, he called out to both men.

“I owe both of you an apology. I never should have asked you to leave your families and break the law. If I hadn't fucked up so much, I never would have needed to call you for help. Now you and your families are suffering. I'm sorry.”

Clint nodded curtly before quickly leaving the room. Scott stared at Steve a moment, looking betrayed, before he left, too.

Steve sat back down and let his head sink into his hands, the guilt overwhelming him. It was somehow fitting that all he was left with was the same emotion that got him into this mess in the first place. After a moment, Sam silently rose and squeezed Steve's shoulder before leaving himself. It was a small gesture but a reassuring one. Maybe Steve hadn't fucked everything up. Maybe he could still fix it. Now he just had to figure out how.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The 3 stooges (Clint, Wanda, and Scott) aren’t really talking to me. It feels like it’s been a long time since we checked in with Tony and I want to bring in Rhodey. So the next chapter will probably go back to New York, instead of continuing in Wakanda. Also, FYI: if I bring Pepper into this, she and Tony will still be broken up. I soured on that relationship in Iron Man III; as someone who suffers from depression, her reaction to Tony’s understandable PTSD pissed me off. I was frankly thrilled in CA:CW when they were revealed to have broken up (and so was my Mom; it was kinda hilarious).


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony faces his grief and an old…friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was supposed to be more Rhodey in this chapter, and (friend) Pepper, too. But then Howard and Nick Fury took over. I actually like both of those characters, though I know I’m in the minority on that. Howard is one of my favorite parts of Agent Carter (after Jarvis, of course), though I admit part of that may be because I’ve always liked Dominic Cooper. And the scene with Fury and Tony in the barn is one the few scenes in Age of Ultron that I actually like, though I haven’t seen it since it was released (online transcripts are very helpful). In my headcanon, they’re flawed but good men. I’m hoping that I’ve done a good enough job portraying them that even those of you who hate them will enjoy this chapter. I’ve actually taken some experiences from my own family and used them here (more info on that in the end notes). Rhodey and Pepper will be in the next chapter.
> 
> I am a terrible and terribly slow author and I am so sorry for the delay. I’ve had this chapter mostly written for weeks, but I’ve struggled to finish it. Plus, work was supposed to calm down; it has not. On the bright side, there’s less fighting with Google Docs because I finally upgraded my iPad. So it should be easier to write, if I can find the time.
> 
> Shameless self-promotion alert: I’ve written another fic that’s Howard-centric and is set right before he and Maria leave to be killed. It’s a companion to this fic, but it is not necessary to read it for this to make sense. But since it’s all my headcanon, I’m making both of these fics into a series.
> 
> Warning: this is a bit stream-of-consciousness, but hopefully it won’t be too hard to follow. Also, this is probably the saddest thing I have ever written. 
> 
> This is not Agents of SHIELD compliant. Even though I love Coulson, I got really far behind on that show and then sort of gave up. So for purposes of this fic, pretend it doesn't exist.

Tony didn’t like cemeteries. He never had. And he wasn’t one to talk to grave stones. But there wasn’t really any other place to talk to them. He hadn’t been back to the house in years and he couldn’t face those memories yet. So the cemetery it was.

He laid the flowers (lilies - her favorite) on the ground beneath his mother's name. And then he sat down, leaning back against the headstone so his head rested near their names - the closest he could get to them.

“I should have come sooner,” he started, “but things have been a bit…crazy. And I guess maybe I was working up the courage to come out here,” he said quietly as he fiddled with the hem of his t-shirt, trying to gather his thoughts. 

“I’m sorry,” he said a moment later. “I thought it was an accident. That’s what everyone said, even Aunt Peggy. I didn’t know and I let your murderers go free for decades. I promise you,” he said, trying not to choke up, “that I won’t let Hydra destroy another family. I’m going to stop them and I will avenge you. I am an Avenger, after all,” he finished, trying to keep the bitterness he felt towards the former Avengers out of his voice. 

He took a deep breath, pushing thoughts of his former colleagues to the side. “I miss you,” he whispered. “Both of you, believe it or not, Dad. I’ve been using this thing, the BARF - yes, I know it’s a bad name - to…I don’t know, come to terms with how things ended between us. I just…” he trailed off. Even though they weren’t actually there, he was still having trouble saying it. “I wish so many things had been different - that I had done things differently. I never thought I wouldn’t get a chance to fix it; you were bigger than life and I couldn't imagine things without you. And then,” he paused, trying to keep his composure, before continuing, “and then, you were gone, both of you. You left me,” he sobbed, burying his face in his hands as the grief he’d been holding in for so long washed over him. 

“And I was angry with you for leaving me,” he choked out in between his sobs, “especially you, Dad, because you were driving, because you had to take Mom away on that weekend trip to Bermuda. I’ve spent so long being angry with you. And I still am, a little, for taking Mom with you when you were taking the serum to DC. But I know now that you didn’t leave me; they took you from me.”

It took him a few minutes to get himself back under control (the tissues Vision had insisted on giving him upon learning Tony was going to the cemetery turned out to be quite helpful). “Look at me, sobbing like a baby. You’ve been gone for 25 years,” he said, shaking his head. “I thought I was dealing with it, but then I found out and it was like it just happened. There’s a part of me that wishes I was still blissfully ignorant, that I didn’t know that Hydra murdered you. I don’t know whether I should hate Steve for not telling me or be grateful to him for giving me more time not knowing the truth.”

Of course, mentioning Steve brought back all the memories of hearing his Dad, Aunt Peggy, Uncle Dum Dum, and the rest of the SSR/Howling Commando squad telling him story after story about Steve.

He leaned his head back, so he could see his father’s name out of the corner of his eye. “I thought I finally understood, Dad, why you thought so highly of Steve and why you wouldn't shut up about him. He was a good man and an even better leader; no one else could have led such a ragtag group of so-called superheroes. He was moral and upright and he stood up for his friends. And I thought I was one of them.” He laughed bitterly. “But we were wrong, Dad, and Aunt Peggy and Uncle Dum Dum, too. The only friend Steve stands up for is Barnes.”

“The sad part,” Tony admitted quietly, “is that I wanted to be his friend - I wanted to be worthy of being his friend. I guess hearing all those stories about how good he was worked, because no matter how much I tried to hate him, I couldn’t. Even our disastrous first meeting didn’t make me hate him. And then we became friends, or so I thought. But for a while, it was almost like a form of redemption: if Captain America could be friends with the Merchant of Death, then I couldn’t be that bad, right? Maybe I could atone for all of the blood on my hands,” he said, his voice cracking under the strain.

After taking a few shaky breaths, he continued, “And then it all came crashing down. I found out I was never his friend. And I know he’s in the wrong on so many things, but there’s still a part of me that thinks that I must be a horrible person because Captain America wouldn’t have betrayed or abandoned a good person. And I’m trying to convince myself that Steve’s choices had nothing to do with me and were all about Barnes, but it hurts to know I don’t matter to Steve as much as I thought I did.” 

He closed his eyes, trying to imagine what his Dad would say if he were here now, but he couldn’t. The part of him that was perpetually angry at Howard was convinced his Dad would automatically side with Steve, but the rational part of him knew his Dad was more complicated than that. And now that he thought about it, Tony remembered a desperation behind all of his Dad’s stories, an insistence that not only was Steve the best man Howard had ever met, but that Howard had been Steve’s friend.

“Had you realized that, too, Dad?” he wondered out loud. “All those years, telling all those stories, were you trying to convince yourself that you mattered to him? That you were good enough to be the friend of the great Captain America?” As he spoke, another memory, one he hadn’t thought about in decades, popped in his head. “There was one time when Aunt Peggy told the story of Steve’s ‘death’,” he started slowly as he remembered the details, “and when Aunt Peggy said that Steve rejected her offer to have you talk Steve through flying the plane, I looked over at you and saw your clenched jaw and stony expression. I thought you were angry at Aunt Peggy for telling the story, but…” He felt sick as the dots finally connected. “Steve hadn’t trusted you, not enough to let you help him,” Tony whispered, as if being quiet would make it better. He chuckled bitterly. “I guess it’s another ‘like father, like son’ thing because he didn’t trust me, either, even before Ultron. He and Natasha didn’t call me - apparently didn’t even think about calling me - when they were on the run from Hydra and had to take down the Helicarriers that I had helped design. I guess you must have felt as worthless as I did.” He shook his head, frustrated. “Why couldn’t he let us help? What was so wrong with us that he refused our help?”

Realizing the guilt his Dad had to have been carrying after the war made a lot of things finally make sense. “At that press conference I gave after getting out of Afghanistan - and doesn’t that feel like several lifetimes ago - I said I wished I’d had the opportunity to ask you about how you felt about what Stark Industries did, whether you had been conflicted or had any doubts. I still wish I’d had that opportunity, Dad, but I think I understand you a little better.”

He tilted his head back to look up at the sky; it was overcast and threatening to rain, and wasn’t that appropriate? Despite the gloomy weather, though, he felt calmer, as if a weight that had been pressing down on him was starting to let up, just a little. He couldn’t help but laugh at himself when he realized he felt better now, talking to a gravestone, than he did after using the BARF. But he was a Stark, so of course he went for the expensive, high-tech solution, instead of the cheap and simple solution. 

With his thoughts going back to his presentation at MIT, though, he remembered the things he hadn’t been willing to say before a group of strangers. “I know, now, Dad, that you did the best you could. I know I wasn’t easy to deal with, but then, neither were you. We’re too alike, I guess.” He turned his head, pressing his temple against the cold stone. “It’s taken me a long time,” he said, “to understand why you did the things you did. For so long, I didn’t think about why you did things because I was too busy being angry with you for doing them. But I think I’m starting to understand.”

“Do you remember,” he began, before realizing, “actually, you’re dead, so you don’t remember.” He shook his head as if trying to clear it and started over. “I remember when I was, what, 4 maybe? And I was working on that engine - the one that ended up on the magazine cover. I got stuck and I went to you for help, but you just told me that I didn’t need your help, that I could do it myself. At the time, I didn’t understand why you wouldn’t help me and it hurt. So I took my hurt and went back to the garage and I did it without your help.”

“Now I see,” he continued. “You didn’t refuse to help me because you didn’t have time or didn’t want to, which is what I’ve always assumed. You didn’t help me because you had more confidence in me than I had in myself. You actually meant what you said: I didn’t need your help to do it. And you were right. But it’s taken me decades to see that. I wish I’d realized it sooner. Maybe things would have been different.”

He sighed. “Everything's so much different when you’re an adult. Things that are cool as a kid suck as an adult. Snow, for instance. Snow is fun for kids; they get to play in it and they get days off from school. But adults still have to go to work. Snow isn’t for playing, it’s for shoveling. That’s one of the reasons I stayed in California so long, because snow wasn’t any fun anymore.” He was babbling, he knew, but it was hard to stop. “And I didn’t want to stay in the house. After the police came to tell us about the accident, I just kept staring at the piano where you’d been playing just before you left and I kept thinking that I was never going to hear you play it again. Jarvis and Ana finally coaxed me into going to bed and I never went into that room again. I’d get to the doorway and freeze and have to turn around. I may have thought about that room while using the BARF, but I still can’t go into it. I haven’t even been back to the house; it’s been shut up for years, even though I moved back to New York a few years ago. But I can’t sell it, either, because it’s the last place I saw you.”

Running out of air, he stopped rambling and closed his eyes, trying to get himself back under control. He’d known this wasn’t going to be easy, but it was turning out to be harder than he’d imagined. There were things he needed to say, no matter how hard it was going to be to get them out and the unpleasant truths he had to face about himself. And since most of his problems had been with his Dad, he had more to say to him than to his Mom.

“I know now, Dad, why you were on my case about the drinking and partying. I always thought you were such a hypocrite because you’d spent years doing the same things. I was sure you thought I was an embarrassment, that my behavior was hurting the company. And maybe that was part of it. But it wasn’t all of it.”

He looked down, as if to hide his face in shame; he usually tried to avoid thinking about those years when he’d behaved so badly. “It was regret, wasn’t it?” he asked, knowing he wasn’t going to get an answer. “You regretted all the time you wasted. I know because I regret it. The things I could have done, the ways I could have helped, the things I might have seen and been able to stop - ”. He cut himself off as he drew a shaky breath. “None of that happened because I was too busy being an ass.”

“If I ever have a kid - and fair warning that it doesn’t look like you’re going to get grandkids - I wouldn’t want him - or her, though a daughter would probably be better behaved - to follow in my footsteps. But I don’t know how I’d prevent that; your way clearly didn’t work and I’m not sure I would do any better.”

Sighing, he debated internally whether to admit the rest, but it wasn’t as if anyone was actually around to hear him, so he decided he might as well get it all off his chest. “But as I said, the chances of you ever getting grandkids is slim. I thought, for a while, that I’d found the right person. Both of you would have liked her, I know, and Dad, you would have had to admit that she’s a better CEO than you and I combined.” He smiled ruefully for a moment, imagining Pepper standing up to his Dad; Tony would have paid good money to see that. 

His amusement, though, was short-lived as he remembered that he’d lost Pepper. “Somehow, it went wrong; we both tried to make it work but it just wasn’t enough,” he admitted. “Mom, I know you were an angel - you had to be to put up with two Stark men - but I keep trying to figure out how both of you made it work for 20 years and I couldn’t make it work for 5 with someone I thought knew me better than I knew myself. I just…” he trailed off, unsure what to say next. Even though it had been a few months since he and Pepper called it quits, losing her was still an open wound. They were still friends and colleagues, of course; Pepper had made it clear he couldn’t get rid of her if he tried and he was so grateful for that, because even if she didn’t love him anymore, she was still one of the best things in his life and he couldn’t lose her. But the overwhelming sense of failure at the demise of their relationship was sometimes too hard to bear.

He shook his head, searching for the strength to admit the things he barely wanted to admit to himself, let alone say out loud. “I wish a lot of things were different. I wish I could go back and fix them. Most of all, though, I want one thing: I wish you’d both be proud of me. I wish I’d earned that.”

“You have,” an unexpected voice rang out. For one crazy moment, Tony thought his Dad had come back to life and was responding. But then his brain caught up with the rest of him and he realized who it was. He groaned, closing his eyes and leaning his head back against the headstone. “Now you’re showing up?” he asked, exasperated. “Where were you when we needed to knock some sense into Steve’s head?”

A shadow fell on him and he opened his eyes to see exactly what he expected to see: Nick Fury looming over him in all his undead, badass fury (pun intended).

Nick snorted. “I was dealing with Hydra because I thought you were all big boys and girls who could take care of yourselves. Clearly, I was wrong,” he said while sitting on the ground opposite Tony. “And don’t try to change the subject. We need to deal with your daddy issues before we save the world again. He would be proud of you, and so would she.”

“How would you know?” Tony retorted, wanting to believe Nick but afraid of being disappointed again.

“Because he always was,” Nick explained patiently.

It was Tony’s turn to snort. “Like I’d believe that. I told you he was happy to see me gone when he shipped me off to boarding school.”

Nick merely raised an eyebrow. “And I already told you that wasn’t true. Maybe I should have explained how I knew that, but you were in the middle of a pity party and I didn’t have time to hold you hand.”

Indignant, Tony replied, “I was dying; it wasn’t a pity party.” Nick stared at him, utterly unimpressed. Remembering just how bad he’d let things get while he was being poisoned by the thing that was keeping him alive, Tony capitulated. “Ok, so maybe it was a pity party, but that doesn’t mean I was wrong.”

Nick, clearly still unimpressed, stated bluntly, “You were then and you are now. And I just heard you say you understand him better and know he did the best he could, so don’t try to hide behind any of that now.”

Tony sighed. “All right, fine. Tell me how Dad was always proud of me,” he said, as nonchalantly as he could, all too aware that Nick saw right through him and could tell how much Tony wanted - needed - to hear this.

“That engine you wanted his help on? The next time Howard was in DC, he kept telling everyone at SHIELD and the Pentagon how you were so smart, you hadn’t needed his help at all.”

Tony blinked. “Dad was…bragging about me?” he asked incredulously.

Nick rolled his eye. “All the time. It got so bad that Director Carter started joking about scheduling meetings with an extra 15 minutes so his bragging wouldn’t cause the meeting to run over. Everything you made, every test you aced, every competition you won, we heard every detail. And when you were in the news, like with that engine or when you built that helper bot, he made sure everyone read it.”

Tony just sat there, stunned. “I never knew that,” he said slowly.

“Of course you didn’t,” Nick retorted. “He didn’t brag about you to you. You know how bad he was at showing how he felt; you’re just as bad. But the one thing he had no trouble showing was his pride in you.”

He just stared at Nick a moment. It was hard for him to believe his Dad had bragged about him, but then again, it sounded like the way Tony interacted with his bots; he was usually snarky when talking to them (he named them DUM-E, U, and Butterfingers, after all), but jumped down the throat of anyone else who criticized them. Good to know he was just continuing the Stark family tradition of dysfunctional relationships. 

Tony gazed at the other man who had known Howard far better than Tony had. This was probably the closest he’d ever come to actually talking with his Dad again. It wasn’t perfect, but then, neither were they. “So you think he’d be proud of me now?” he asked, hating how needy he sounded, but desperately needing to hear Nick’s answer.

“He would be,” Nick said quietly, but with confidence. “He’d be bragging to the whole world about how his son is Iron Man and how you’re going to save the world.”

Tony snorted in disbelief. “You think he’d be proud of me even with all my screw-ups? Stane? Sokovia? This ridiculous civil war?”

Nick just cocked an eyebrow. “He was no stranger to screw-ups - or to others using his inventions to hurt people. You should read the file on the battle of Finrow and the time he was accused of treason. As for Stane…,” Nick paused a moment before continuing, “I don’t think Howard would have blamed you and probably would have taken a lot of the blame himself for what Stane did.”

Pushing aside his curiosity over Finrow (he’d have Friday start a search for information on that as soon as he got out of here), he said, “From the investigation we conducted afterwards, it looks like Stane didn’t start selling weapons under the table until he was acting CEO after Dad died. So how would that be Dad’s fault?”

Nick sighed and leaned back against the headstone behind him. “Howard was the one who brought Stane into Stark Industries and let him rise through the ranks; if Howard hadn’t done that, Stane wouldn’t have been in a position to sell your weapons under the table. I can’t be certain, but Howard kept a lot of secrets and he didn’t trust many people, and I doubt he trusted Stane.”

Tony was still skeptical and it must have shown on his face, because Nick continued, “Are you really surprised to hear that? If Howard had trusted Stane - or SHIELD, for that matter - why did he go to such lengths to hide his research on vibranium for the arc reactor? Why didn’t he just leave it in his files instead of using the layout of the Stark Expo to show the atomic structure and leaving cryptic clues in recordings?” 

That…was actually a really good point. Tony had been so preoccupied with nearly dying that it hadn’t occurred to him to wonder why his Dad had taken such ridiculous measures to hide his research. But if his Dad had done such a good job at hiding everything… “Didn’t you know? Isn’t that why you delivered those trunks?”

Nick shook his head. “I didn’t know; I hoped. You were being poisoned by the arc reactor and I knew Howard had never been happy with the design they used to build the one in California and that he had done more research. I wasn’t sure if he had the solution you need or whether having access to his research would point you in the right direction. Either way, I figured it was time you got the tools to carry on his research. I learned a long time ago not to underestimate a Stark’s intellect,” he finished wryly.

Tony let that sink in. He wanted to believe Nick and trust him on this, if nothing else, but he couldn’t just yet. “Did you know?” he asked, deliberately not specifying what.

“No,” Nick said, firmly, and some of the tension remaining in Tony’s chest loosened. “After Zemo’s plan came to light, I looked through the leaked SHIELD files. Only the highest leadership - Carter, Pearce, Duggan - knew because they knew the serum had been stolen. But that was classified at the highest level. I was too far down in the chain of command at that point, so I didn’t know. I didn’t even know he’d been working on the serum; that was also highly classified. Officially, their deaths were an accident. It was December and the roads were icy. I never doubted that it was an accident so I didn’t dig any deeper even when I rose high enough in the ranks to get the necessary security clearance.”

Tony nodded, relieved and glad that he wasn’t facing another betrayal. He considered asking Nick whether Nick would have told him if he had known but decided it wasn’t worth it. “So Steve never told you?” he asked instead.

Nick chuckled bitterly. “You think the golden boy would have sullied his hands by sharing information with a spy like me?”

Tony blinked in surprised; that wasn’t the answer he was expecting. But at the same time, he understood exactly how Nick felt. 

“Romanoff knew,” Nick said, and for a moment, the knowledge that another fellow Avenger had betrayed him took Tony’s breath away. “She didn’t tell me,” Nick continued, “but she was with Rogers when he found out.”

It was Tony’s turn to laugh bitterly. “Of course she knew. Natasha is on no one’s side but her own. I don’t know why I ever expected anything more from either of them.” He pushed the shock and hurt to the side because he just didn’t have time to deal with it right now. Besides, there was a bigger question he needed answered. “Why are you telling me this?”

The older man sighed again. “I haven’t told you about a lot of things. And I felt justified in doing that because SHIELD was safeguarding a lot of secrets that were too dangerous to share. But it’s a different world than it used to be. I may not like the Accords - and I don’t - and Secretary Ross is an incompetent and obsessive ass. But I learned early on in my SHIELD career that you have to take the world as it is, not how you want it to be. We both know that something bigger is coming and if we’re going to stop it, you need to be able to trust me.” 

Tony nodded. He was never going to completely trust Nick, but he could trust the (former?) spy enough to work with him. 

But Nick wasn't finished. “And I told you during the Ultron debacle: I care about you a great deal. Despite your best efforts, I actually like you, too. Plus, Howard was a good friend and he would never forgive me if I betrayed his son,” he admitted, seemingly sincere.

For a moment, Tony just stared at the older man, unable to come up with a response. He and Nick had a strange relationship: sometimes antagonistic, sometimes cooperative. Nick had been strangely supportive (by Nick’s standards) during the whole Ultron debacle. For the first time, he was starting to believe he might be able to rely on the former spy - and considering how few people Tony had right now that he could rely on, he’d take what he could get.

“So what do we do now?” Tony asked wearily. As much as he hated taking instruction from the other man, he was tired of all the pressure being on him alone. It was time to spread the responsibility - and the blame - around.

“The same thing we always do.”

Amused, Tony asked, “What? Try to take over the world?” 

Nick glared at him. “No, Pinky,” he said.

Tony grinned; he had to give Nick geek points for not only catching the reference, but also playing along. “So what are we going to do, Brain?” he asked, far too amused by the joke.

Nick smiled; it was disturbing. But it only lasted a moment before the older man turned serious again. “We pick up the pieces and we carry on. We try our best, even if our best isn’t good enough, because to do otherwise would be to give up and we are some stubborn bastards who won’t do that. And if we’re lucky, we might even win.”

Sobering, Tony nodded. “Sounds like a plan.” 

The men rose but as Nick walked away, Tony lingered at his parents’ gravestone; he hadn’t said everything he needed to say. Waiting long enough that he could pretend Nick wasn’t listening, he said quietly, “I never got the chance to say goodbye. I mean, I did it in the BARF-thing, but you weren’t there. You aren’t here now, either, but I guess this is the closest I can get.” He paused, trying to swallow around the lump in his throat. “I love you both and I know you loved me. I’ll always miss you and I’ll always wish things had been different. But I need to stop being stuck in the past.” 

“Goodbye, Mom. Goodbye, Dad.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story about Tony asking Howard for help is based on a story my Mom recently told me, though it wasn’t an engine; it was a geography assignment. Mom told me that, at the time, she was hurt because my grandfather wouldn’t help her, and she ended up doing it on her own. Now she knows he didn’t help her because he had confidence in her abilities that she herself didn’t have, and she’s grateful for that. 
> 
> I’ve been using my grandfather to help me understand Howard. My grandfather would be about 10 years younger than Howard (my grandfather barely missed being drafted in WWII because of age and a farm deferment). And my Mom’s family is of German extraction, like I imagine the Starks are (after all, “stark” is German for “strong.”). When my Mom was growing up in the 50s and 60s, my grandfather was very reserved, which always baffles me and my siblings because Papa is a teddy bear. Apparently, becoming a grandfather has mellowed him out considerably.
> 
> The bragging thing happened to me. I was back visiting from law school and one of my Mom’s coworkers/friends starts asking me detailed questions about things that happened to me at school. I get along great with my Mom and talk with her twice a week, but I was astonished to find out she was telling everyone about what I was doing. I also noticed that in the articles you see in the beginning of IM, there’s a part about Tony being quick to defend his creations, which is a bit different than how Tony treats his bots. I see Howard as unable to find the words to tell Tony he’s proud of him but bragging to everyone in hearing range about how smart his son is.
> 
> Also, I’ve seen a lot of fics over the past few years in which Howard caused the accident because he was drunk. I don’t read the comics, but I understand that comics!Howard was an alcoholic (as is Tony). But I don’t think that’s the case in the MCU. We’ve seen Howard drunk just once and he still seemed functional. We do see him drinking occasionally in Agent Carter, but that wasn’t atypical for the time period. And in Civil War, he did not seem drunk in Tony’s memories or in the flashbacks to his death. I’m a lawyer so my job is to make arguments based on the evidence and I just don’t see evidence for that. So for my headcanon, Howard wasn’t driving drunk and didn’t cause the accident. But of course, everyone is entitled to their own headcanon.


End file.
